Senator BACK (Western Australia) (12:46): I rise to make some comments on the outcome of the Western Australian state election of 11 March in which the Labor Party convincingly won that election. I want to go back to 2008, when I was a candidate myself in the then state election 8½ years ago, and reflect on the reason why the Liberal Party, together with the National Party, ultimately won that election. The question asked by us was: 'What had Labor done in government in the last number of years?' The answer was: 'Nobody could answer the question.' And that is why we swept to victory. The corollary to that was the then Treasurer, Mr Ripper, very proudly said that he did not leave much of a deficit or debt. That was because he did not do anything. One of the highlights is the fact that the only active minister at that time, Minister Alannah MacTiernan, is now back in the Western Australian cabinet, so we can hopefully expect that at least one of the previously failed ministers might be able to achieve something, because then Ms MacTiernan from the other place, now Minister MacTiernan, was indeed a very effective minister.

What I also want to reflect on is that Mr Colin Barnett had made the decision in 2008, after a stellar career in politics in Western Australia, to retire. History records that he delayed that decision, and for the next 8½ years he led a very, very successful government in the state of Western Australia. What is not understood is that in those 8½ years more than the population equivalent of Tasmania, more than 500,000 people, came into Western Australia. Barnett was an outstanding premier. He was a decision maker. Yes, it is the case that debt was run up during that time. As you would know, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, you were on polling booths as I was, the interesting point in that election was that everyone came to associate debt with toxic debt—the Gillard memorial halls, the $900 cheques of Mr Rudd and, regrettably, the pink batts. Everyone was associating debt with bad debt. What did Barnett do in his time as premier? He created assets for the state of Western Australia. When somebody said to me, 'There's too much debt,' I said: 'Which of the hospitals didn't you want built or refurbished in the country and in the city? Which of the road systems didn't you want built? Which of the schools didn't you want built? Which of the other infrastructure projects for which that state has now been set up so well didn't you want?' There is the underground railway. It has taken 100 years for someone to do it. There is the Elizabeth Quay development. I said to somebody the other day that in terms of assets versus liabilities Barnett spent $400 million to bring the river back up to the city, but he has already made $390 million of the $400 million back in land sales. That is what debt is when it is creates assets. Regrettably, of course, the people of Western Australia saw the fact that debt had been built up. They failed to acknowledge that it was debt on the construction of assets.

Barnett was my minister when I was running a government trading enterprise in the early 1990s. He did not tolerate fools, which is probably the reason why he and I got on so well. I wish him well in whatever role he now takes. If it is back in Toodyay, with his sheep, I will once again be wanting to know the names of the sheep, as I have asked him so often.

I also now want to draw attention to what I believe was the other factor related to the Liberal Party losing the election, and that is Western Australia's share of GST. It is a factor. When I came into this parliament in 2009, we were getting 88c back in every dollar that Western Australia contributed. The 88c went down to 78c, 68c, 55c, 45c and 38c in the dollar, and eventually it got to 30c in the dollar. What did that cost the people of Western Australia? We lost $4.2 billion in GST this year that should have come to WA. Our deficit was $3.9 billion. Remember: $4.2 billion should have come back in and $3.9 billion was the deficit. Put one against the other and there should be a $300 million surplus. What does that relate to? As Judith Sloan eloquently said the other day—and you and I know this, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, as indeed would the Deputy President, who is in the chamber—for every dollar that Western Australia contributes at the moment we get 30c back. That means every man, woman and child in WA hands over $1,736 to the other states and territories. Let's turn that around, Senator Farrell, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. Every South Australian—man, woman and child—gets $1,052 bonus. Every Tasmanian, to Senator Urquhart, gets $1,950. Remember: Western Australians are paying $1,700. Every Northern Territorian gets $10,734. And not to be left out, Senator Seselja, here in the Australian Capital Territory, with the highest incomes and the lowest unemployment in the nation, every ACT resident gets $400 from the largesse of the Western Australian economy and community.

I congratulate Mr Ben Wyatt, who is the new Treasurer. I know that I am going to step on a few toes here, but at least it is a view that I have, and I share it, and that is that Mr Wyatt is not beholden to the union movement. I make the point—quite fairly, I believe—that so many of the ministers in the new government are themselves from the union movement. You know as well as I do, Mr Acting Deputy President, those have come calling since Mr McGowan has been made the Premier. It is interesting that in my first speech, on St Patrick's Day in 2009, I made comment of Mr Ben Wyatt because he was the shadow Treasurer and a fellow Old Aquinian. At that time, all of the other treasurers of Australia had gotten together around COAG and had excluded the Western Australian Treasurer. It was then that shadow Treasurer Ben Wyatt shared the state Treasurer's disappointment, ' particularly in light of the fact that many of the other states have been enjoying the benefits of Western Australia's largesse'. The now-Treasurer Ben Wyatt went on to say:

The States can't successfully come to a common position in negotiations with the Commonwealth when they ignore the State with the fastest economic growth …

So I do congratulate Ben Wyatt. He and his relation Ken Wyatt are making a great contribution to state and federal politics in this country.

I make the observation about the sham bid by Mr Stephen Smith at about this time last year, on 14 March 2016. We were asked to believe the elder statesmen John Halden, a friend of mine; Chris Evans, a previous leader of the government here in this place; and Stephen Smith, a past foreign minister apparently decided to confect an opposition to leader McGowan. Anybody who believed that must have believed in the Easter bunny that came along the next Friday. As if three elder statesmen of the Labor Party in WA would stand up and genuinely want to oppose the leader. We all know why they did it: Mark McGowan at the time was seen as being weak and ineffectual, and the only way to make him into a leader was to seem to oppose him. And they did—I will say that—and it was a successful exercise. Stephen Smith, despite every hard effort, was thrust to one side by the Labor caucus, leaving Mr McGowan unopposed as the leader of the future.

It is absolutely critically important in my view to reflect on the continuing importance of the Western Australian economy to the national economy. Yes, it is the case that the construction phases of the major projects have come to a close or are winding down. That is the case. Gorgon is two-thirds complete. Wheatstone will soon go to their first production of LNG. Roy Hill, the big iron ore mine of the Rinehart Group, is now complete. We know of the excellence of the big construction projects.

It is the case that royalty income to the state of Western Australia did decline and because we have this lag in the grants commission process we found a circumstance in which Western Australia's share of GST declined. When it was established by Costello, Howard and the premiers and chief ministers of the time, nobody believed that one state would get back 30 cents out of every dollar, and that matter has got to be addressed. Whether it is through resources sharing or whether it is through a formula that says the states and territories should be held to account for the capacity to earn revenue and to contain expenditure and to be rewarded or penalised against that, something has got to happen to the grants commission process.

Senator LINES (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (12:56): I cannot let those comments by Senator Back go unchallenged. I just want to reflect on what happened in Western Australia two weeks ago at the state elections. We saw the Liberal Party and its coalition partner, the National Party, completely wiped out. Why? Because the Liberal Party there, like the Liberal Party here, had become completely arrogant and out of touch with the aspirations and the wishes of ordinary Western Australian voters.

I can absolutely say that the Liberal Party and the National Party were wiped out because in the 59-seat Western Australian parliament the Labor Party now holds 41 seats. I was quite gobsmacked to hear Senator Back stand there and go on and on about how wonderful Colin Barnett was and what a great leader he was. If he was the leader Senator Back has just outlined, surely he would still be in government because he would be popular. Again, it shows the Liberal Party had an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and to listen to voters or to carry on with complete arrogance in the way they did in Western Australia and in the way we see the Turnbull government doing here in this parliament. Labor did not win 41 seats out of a 59-seat parliament because the previous government was so popular and had done such a terrific job.

I was pleased to finally hear a Western Australian senator—indeed, a Western Australian Liberal member—concede that Mr Barnett ran up the debt. Western Australia has a very shameful debt—a massive debt into the billions of dollars. That is because Mr Barnett simply could not manage the expenditure, despite him getting carriage of a public hospital Labor had planned when we were in government, the Fiona Stanley Hospital. It was paid for with public funds and it was a plan to produce a first-class hospital. What did we see with Fiona Stanley Hospital? We saw mistake after mistake and budget overrun after budget overrun to the tune of millions of dollars. That hospital's opening was delayed by more than a year—almost two years—because of the mismanagement by the Barnett government.

Then we saw the children's hospital. The Australian Medical Association is hardly a friend of Labor governments, but it turned on the Barnett government like no other because instead of building a state-of-the-art children's hospital the government has built a hospital that is already too small before it has even opened. That hospital has not opened and we have had scandal after scandal about the Barnett government and indeed the health minister. What did we see? Let's not forget: six of the Barnett ministers lost their seats. When ministers lose their seats I think that tells very clearly that voters in Western Australia had had enough.

Minister Day, the health minister—again, incredibly arrogant and out of touch with what Western Australians were saying—was responsible for what could only be described as the debacle of the children's hospital, which is still not opened and is plagued with problems. The major contractor was in an open fight with the Barnett government and that is a mess that the Labor government, through the Premier, Mr McGowan, have now inherited. We had cheap asbestos, imported from China, brought onto that site. And guess what? The union actually identified the problem—the union that Senator Back and others on the government side like to malign so much. Only the union stood up when asbestos was found on that site—and it now needs to be rectified by the major contractor to make that hospital safe.

The Australian Medical Association is saying that the brand new children's hospital—which is yet to be opened, is way behind schedule and has a massive cost overrun—is too small. The current children's hospital, which the Barnett government has not spent any money on, continues to be used because of the cost overruns, the poor work that has been carried out on the new children's hospital and the asbestos that has been found on the site—which has to be rectified. In the latest scandal, lead has been found in the water at that hospital—and it also has substandard glass. Minister Day, who lost his seat at the election, is trying to wash his hands of the matter and say it had nothing to do with him. Of course the buck stops with the minister!

The failed projects do not stop there. We have this flash new football stadium just down the road from where I live. Not only was the Premier in an open war with the Eagles about the negotiations for them to use the oval—we are going from bad to worse—but the same faulty glass that was found at the children's hospital was also found at the stadium. Once again, there will be cost overruns. We have a fancy pedestrian bridge across the Swan River—which goes to nowhere—to try and reduce the traffic that will be created by the stadium. With Western Australia now having the highest rate of unemployment in Australia—and that is the legacy of the Barnett Liberal government—you would think they would have manufactured the steel for the footbridge in Western Australia. But they did not. They imported it from Malaysia. And we have just found out that that steel is now delayed. No doubt, when it arrives it will not measure up—like the asbestos we found in the children's hospital, the lead we found in the water in the children's hospital, the faulty glass we found in the children's hospital and the faulty glass we found in the stadium. The steel that is being manufactured in Malaysia—and not giving unemployed Western Australians the opportunity to work on that footbridge—has been delayed.

The Liberals could learn a lesson, look a little bit humble and actually try and work out what went wrong for them in Western Australia. But no. Judging by the comments that we have heard in here today from Senator Back, we are going to continue to praise Colin Barnett and say what a wonderful leader he was. If he was so wonderful, he would not have had the tsunami of an election result that we saw in Western Australia.

We now have a new Premier, a fresh approach and plans to create employment in Western Australia with a great new team. We won more than 20 seats. We now have 41 of the 59 seats in the parliament. And I am pleased to say WA Labor has set yet another record—for the number of women. Those on the other side could start to look at how we do that as well. Many of the new MPs are women and we have now set a new record for the number of women in the Western Australian parliament. The Labor women outrank the Liberal women two to one. Shame on them! And we hear all the excuses in the world. 'We want to pick women on merit.' And I have heard Liberals say young women are not attracted to politics.

Well, let me tell you some stories. Amber Jade Sanderson, the new member for Morley is a young woman with young children. She has a son who is about 14 months old. That has not stopped her. Jessica Stojkovski, the new member for Kingsley, has children the same age as Amber's. Having young children has not stopped her. Lisa O'Malley, the new member for Bicton, is another young mum with primary school aged children. I think her youngest is about seven. Having young children did not stop her. Emily Hamilton, the new member for Joondalup is another young woman with young children. Cassie Rowe, the new member for Belmont has two young children under the age of four. Obviously that did not stop her. Rita Saffioti, a re-elected member, has three young children. So it is high time the Liberals started to look at putting women forward. We have 15 MLAs and seven MLCs. (Time expired)

Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (13:06): Given the Prime Minister's announcement yesterday that his government intends to try to water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act to make it easier to be a racist in Australia, I was bracing myself for The Australian today; but, my word, they have absolutely outdone themselves down there at the Q Society gazette. We have the front page. We have the editorial. We have Paul Kelly, Caroline Overington, Chris Merritt, Janet Albrechtsen, Gary Jones, the sketch and the ongoing best of Bill Leak series, with another particularly unfunny cartoon featuring Professor Gillian Triggs. Fair dinkum! Down there at Holt Street, they are celebrating as if they have just stormed the bloody Bastille today, and those self-styled freedom warriors—let's make no mistake—have finally bullied a craven Prime Minister into trying to water down racial hate speech laws.

I have to say that 16—that is 16—articles is more than just a tad excessive; it is actually completely onanistic in The Australian today. There are 16 articles, so we had a quick brainstorm in the office this morning, and I have come up with 16 subjects I reckon The Australian should have focused on today rather than their onanistic cacophony of self-congratulation and mutual back-slapping that we have been subjected today. First and foremost is global warming, the most important issue facing humanity today. Second is the decline of coal and the resulting uncertainty for Australia's electricity sector. We have our unconscionable treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. We could have read in The Australian today how civil liberties are under attack through the rise in the national security state and the ongoing erosion of civil liberties and human rights in this country. We could have read about the need for a bill of rights, but, of course, we are not reading about that, because I do not believe The Australian supports a bill of rights, even though it styles itself as a great protector of the right to freedom of speech. Why didn't we hear about housing unaffordability and rental stress, particularly for young people? I make the point that they actually did touch on this; it was on page 19, and we had to wade through pages of vomitous pap on 18C before we could get there. What about the threat to global security of the Trump administration? Fair dinkum! There is every likelihood our country is going to get sucked into a war with China in the South China Sea because Donald Trump cannot control himself and there has not been a war in the last century that the US went into that Australia did not blindly follow them into. Where is the focus on that? Nowhere to be seen. There are 16 articles of vomitous pap on 18C. What about coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef? We have just had some science come out on that. But no—nothing on the slow death, caused by the burning coal so beloved of the coalition and, for that matter, the Labor Party, of one of our global natural icons, with all of the myriad beautiful species and, for that matter, human jobs that it supports. What about the appalling rates of Indigenous incarceration in this country? Actually, not making racist jokes about it would be a good start as well. What about the Tasmanian government's plan to open up the high-conservation-value forests for logging, a plan that Senator Duniam would have worked closely on while he was deputy chief of staff to the Tasmanian Premier, Will Hodgman? What about the failure of multinational companies to pay their fair share of tax? I note the difference today in Fairfax, which quite rightly gave prime billing to the outstanding work done by my friend and colleague Senator Whish-Wilson and his efforts to ensure that our banks are held to account for the many issues that they have. What about the disappearance of work-life balance in this country or the runaway success of the inaugural AFL women's season, for example? What about the lack of a Tasmanian team in the national men's and women's football and AFL leagues, something I know Senator Duniam agrees with me on? What about how racist hate speech and structural inequality deny people their human dignity, with significant mental and physical health consequences? There are so many issues The Australian could be focused on, but again we see page after page, including the front page and a massive double-page spread in the middle of the Q Society gazette today, basically celebrating what they see as their victory on 18C.

Unfortunately, that is all going to turn a bit sombre when the reforms go down in this Senate, which I believe they are overwhelmingly likely to do when they are introduced. I make a prediction here: they will not be introduced into the House of Reps, because the government knows that Liberal members will cross the floor in the House of Reps. Those laws will undoubtedly be introduced into the Senate, where I believe they will go down and meet the fate that they deserve. Of course, when that happens, no doubt they will break out the black obituary borders down there at Holt Street, and we will be forced to sit again through an orgy of mourning and article after article, photo after photo and cartoon after cartoon telling us how freedom of speech is dead in this country.

While I am talking about pretty awful newspapers, I want to mention the unofficial sponsors of the Cronulla riots, The Daily Telegraph.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Whish-Wilson ): Senator McKim, I will just pull you up at this point. You can read from documents, but you are not to hold up and use them as props.

Senator McKIM: Okay, I will not do that, but I do want to talk about the front page in The Daily Telegraph today, which is basically an attempt to frame up immigrants for the housing price bubble in Sydney. It is a disgusting article. I am tempted to call it dog-whistle journalism, but to be frank it is more like an air raid siren than a dog whistle. It is an appalling piece of racism and gutter journalism. The Daily Telegraph and presumably the government, which no doubt dropped this story as an exclusive to Sharri Markson last night, have completely ignored the major drivers of housing unaffordability in Sydney. There is nothing in there about a long-term structural underinvestment in public and social housing. There is nothing in there about all the public handouts to property speculators contained in things like the negative gearing policy that we currently have in this country and the obscene capital gains tax discount, which is also, tragically, tax policy in this country. There is nothing about property speculators leaving houses basically untenanted because they cannot be bothered to go through what they see as the hassle of getting tenants, because their profits are quite reasonable, thanks very much, thanks to the booming house prices in Sydney and the ongoing taxpayer handouts that they get through the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing.

It is worth reminding The Daily Telegraph that in fact, if you are a property speculator buying your 50th investment property in this country, you get more direct taxpayer subsidy from the government than a young couple trying to buy their first home. It makes me sick, it makes a lot of Australians sick, and it is one of the prime drivers of economic inequality in this country that will end up, ultimately, in shaking the very foundations of our society. I refer members to academic studies that have looked at what brings down civilisations in human history. There are two common factors in the crumbling and collapse of every human civilisation that we know about. One is environmental degradation. Tick, it is happening in front of our eyes. And two is a very big gap between the haves and the have nots in the relevant societies. Again, tick, it is happening before our eyes. I know people will have a little bit of a chuckle and a bit of a smirk about what I am saying, but unless we address environmental sustainability and unless we address economic inequality the foundations of our society will continue to crack. These are now no longer hairline cracks that we are seeing; they are broader than hairline cracks, and they exist right down to the bottom of the foundations of our society.

I am bracing myself for what we are going to see in the Q Society gazette when 18C goes down in this place. I am predicting more than what we saw today, which was most of the front page—an entire double page spread and about half of the editorial page. I think it will be worse. I think the black borders will be pulled out and we will see an obituary for their much beloved love child, 18C reform, and, quite frankly, that is one time I will be celebrating, when the attempt of this government, bullied by The Australian and those editorial writers down at Holt Street into trying to make it easier to be a racist in this country, goes down in the screaming heap that it deserves to go down in.

Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania) (13:16): It gives me great pleasure today to come in here to speak on a matter of great positivity for the state of Tasmania.

Senator Smith interjecting—

Senator DUNIAM: Yes, I thought so too, Senator Smith.

Senator Cameron: Change of government!

Senator DUNIAM: Thanks, Senator Cameron. We look forward to you moving to Tasmania in the very near future too. Unlike some, I would like to talk about the good things that come out of our state. On Monday, I spoke about our strong medical research capability and the history we have of achievement in that field. While others will talk doom and gloom, and try and create a perception that things are not good in Tasmania at all, I think it is important to try and set the record straight and to go with the Tasmanian community to look forward with optimism rather than just at the challenges we face.

Today, I am going to be talking about one of the bright spots in the Tasmanian economy, and that is the tourism sector, which I am sure we are all big supporters of in this place. I made mention of this sector in my first speech for good reason. I believe the importance of that industry to our economy cannot be underestimated. As I say, I do not think any senator from my home state could possibly disagree with me when I say that it is one of the key industries in our state when it comes to employment, because it is one of our competitive strengths.

While Tasmania is a smaller jurisdiction, by comparison with the larger mainland states, our performance at the annual Australian Tourism Awards is a good indicator of how right we do it down there. We won more gold medals than any other state in the Commonwealth, and I have to add that this is for the third year running. This is from the small state of Tasmania.

In the words of the Premier, Will Hodgman, who is a good friend, as Senator McKim alerted to before, but an even better Tourism Minister, 'Tasmania does tourism better than anyone else in the country.' I have to agree with that. He is also right to point out that the strength of the Tasmanian performance, not just at the awards but as an industry in general, comes from the strong relationship between the government and the industry.

I have to give a hearty commendation to the leaders of the tourism industry in Tasmania. They are people who have worked hard, who have had a vision and worked extremely hard with government and other industry operators to bring about the realisation of our competitive strengths. There are too many to name, of course, but I would like to make particular mention of a few that have worked exceptionally hard over the years to see the growth that we have had in this industry. I will start with Luke Martin, who is the head of the Tourism Industry Council Tasmania. It is led by the chair of its board, Daniel Leesong, and before him the venerable Simon Currant, who would be familiar to many Tasmanians, I am sure.

An honourable senator interjecting—

Senator DUNIAM: That is right. The board, the chair and the CEO have all worked tirelessly to realise the tourism potential of our state, and I think they have done great things.

There are also the private investors, who have seen the opportunity to invest in our state and make the most of what we have to offer. People like David Walsh who created the incredible MONA, and the associated festivals and exhibitions, which, quite frankly, have transformed the face of tourism in our state. I do not think anyone can argue with this. There is Rob Pennicott with his wilderness adventures and Brett Torossi with her stunning boutique accommodation properties across Tasmania. The work of these people in the industry, with government, has resulted in the strong performance I have already mentioned.

Nationally, as was highlighted by our federal tourism minister, Steve Ciobo, there has been significant growth across the country, and I am pleased Tasmania is part of that. Nationally, spending by international visitors reached the unprecedented height of $39.1 billion last year. We have seen incredible growth in international visitor numbers from right across Asia and the US. The investment by government in assisting the growth in the tourism sector is vital. The Turnbull government's investment—it is an investment that has been made by many successive governments I must point out—of $639 million to promote this country as a destination, alongside being able to negotiate some of the world's best aviation access agreements and the introduction of visitor visa access improvements, are all aiding this fantastic growth.

Again, specifically turning to the state of Tasmania and the rate of growth in this piece of paradise, for the first time ever Tasmania has passed the 1.2 million visitors per annum mark. I believe that is an incredible achievement. In opposition—Senator McKim would recall this—the now Premier, then shadow tourism minister, named a target for visitors reaching the state of Tasmania, hoping we would be at 1.5 million visitor per annum by 2020. This target was set on advice from industry. It is important to point out that when the target was set, industry said that when we reached that target we would create an extra 8,000 jobs, particularly in regional Tasmania, where jobs are so badly needed. It is clear though the government is well on its way to achieving this target, given that it only requires a five per cent growth in annual visitor numbers to reach it. In the last year we had a seven per cent growth in visitor numbers to the state, so we are on the way. Further, we have seen an increase in spending of 10 per cent, bringing it to a total of $2.14 billion. So Tasmania on these numbers and by any objective measure is punching well above its weight and I believe this is a great thing for our state.

Back to the importance of tourism to the regions in Tasmania, I have previously made mention of the fact that Tourism Research Australia has previously reported that the east and west coasts of Tasmania, both made up of several regional communities, are the fifth and sixth most tourism dependent regions in the country. That demonstrates just how important good policy and hard work in this area is to the growth of this economy and creating jobs. We saw an 11 per cent increase in visitation to the north of the state, a 10 per cent increase to our spectacular east coast and a seven per cent increase to the equally beautiful Cradle Coast region in the north and the west. Credit also must be given to the steps the Tasmanian government has taken in altering how the ferry service across Bass Strait, the TT Line, operates, focusing now on maximising the number of visitors that utilise the service rather than commercial returns. This change in focus has seen an increase in sea visitors of 11 per cent, and those visitors are arriving in the north of our state where we are seeing more stay and take in what the north has to offer.

As was the case with national statistics about international visitors, the same applies at home in Tasmania. International visitors have grown by 11 per cent. The US is the largest market. And it is on this point, the growth we are seeing from international markets, that the investment made by the Australian government of $38 million in the Hobart International Airport runway extension will be vital to seeing that continued growth in international visitor numbers. In the very near future, we will be seeing direct air freight flights from Hobart direct into Asia, meaning that the fresh produce—the seafood, the berries and cherries, the meat products that the world is willing to pay such a premium for—will more easily make it to market. This is a boon for our local producers.

Similarly, once the runway extension is completed, I am certain—and I also have it on good authority—that we will see direct charter flights to and from Asian destinations into Tasmania. And hopefully, one day, we will see regular scheduled flights to and from Asian destinations into Tasmania. Although, to continue to be viewed as the 'must-see destination', the Tasmanian government realises the state needs to continue to work with industry and foster the creation of new product offerings—new experiences, new things for people to see and do, new reasons for them to come, or hopefully return for a second, third or fourth trip.

And so I await with excitement the outcome of the work being undertaken on the Cradle Mountain masterplan. This is one of those developments in a truly spectacular part of the world that I think absolutely needs investment. So I look forward to working with the Tasmanian tourism industry, including the Cradle Coast Authority, to see that the required funds will be made available to bring the Cradle vision to life.

Very exciting, too, are the moves by the state government to remove uncertainty around the process to enable developers who wish to lodge development applications to build a cable car up Mount Wellington. This is an exciting development in our capital. I am certain those who know the mountain will see the merit in such a project. It has worked well in other countries, and indeed one only has to look at the Kuranda Skyrail in Cairns to see what such a new product can do for visitor demand.

Additionally, the amazing and revolutionary policy adopted by the Tasmanian government in allowing sensitive, sustainable and appropriate tourism developments in our national parks and reserves is to be commended. We have some of the most spectacular reserves in the world, and it is time to open them up to allow not just the uber-fit, but everyone, to see them.

I end on this note: we have the best environment, the best forests, the best beaches, the best rivers, the best restaurants and chefs, the best food and the best drink—whiskey, wine and beer. We also know how to market ourselves. Tasmania is doing well. Come on down see what the hype is all about. (Time expired)

Senator CAMERON (New South Wales) (13:26): On 5 March I received correspondence from a New South Wales constituent, Mr Ian Macpherson, in relation to the tragic death of his son, Tim Macpherson. Tim was needlessly killed in a workplace incident at the Barangaroo Ferry Hub site.

I rang Mr Macpherson to offer my condolences to him and his family, and was shocked at the circumstances of his son's death. On Wednesday afternoon 1 March 2017, the transfer of a steel beam by the construction barge Maeve Anne at the Barangaroo Ferry Hub went horribly wrong. An unsecured steel beam was struck by the beam that was being lifted. The unsecured beam came crashing down onto the deck of the barge. For some reason, as yet unknown, at least two workers were on the deck of the barge, under the lift. One of them was a 32-year-old rigger/dogman, Tim Macpherson. Tim was crushed under the beam and was killed immediately.

Tim had his whole life ahead of him. He was married to Ashleigh, with a young son, Jack. Ashleigh is pregnant with their second child. Tim and Ashleigh had just purchased their new home in Windella, near Maitland in New South Wales. This is a young hardworking family man struck down in the prime of his life in yet another construction fatality. A lovely young family has been torn apart as a result of a construction industry death that was entirely avoidable. This tragedy should never have happened.

The main contractor for the Ferry Hub, McConnell Dowell; the barge contractor, Brady Marine & Civil; and the labour-hire agency that employed Tim, Constructive Workforce, all have questions to answer. New South Wales Maritime has questions to answer. The safety regulator, AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, has questions to answer. There are so many questions in relation to this shocking incident that I believe the New South Wales coroner should conduct an inquest under the provisions in section 27. That is:

(d) if it appears to the coroner concerned that the manner and cause of the person’s death have not been sufficiently disclosed …

Among the many issues and questions that need to be disclosed are the following. Why did McConnell Dowell contract Brady Marine & Civil to carry out work on the ferry hub site when reputable barge operators could provide barges that complied with AMSA regulations? What steps were taken to ensure that the barge Maeve Anne was fit to sail from Brisbane to Sydney? What steps did McConnell Dowell take to ensure that the Maeve Anne, the barge used on the Barangaroo site, was fit for purpose?

Why were Brady Marine & Civil allowed to operate from February 2016 to 30 May 2016 with a barge that did not comply with AMSA safety regulations? What inspections were undertaken when the barge arrived from Brisbane and between February 2016 and 30 May 2016? Why did it take almost four months to issue the barge operator with a prohibition notice from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority?

Why did New South Wales Maritime, operating as the delegate of AMSA, issue a temporary operating exemption on Friday, 8 June 2016? What inspections were undertaken prior to issuing the temporary operating exemption? Why did AMSA issue a specific exemption to Brady Marine for certain requirements in the act on 6 October 2016? What inspections did AMSA carry out in granting this exemption?

What inspections were undertaken by New South Wales Maritime or AMSA prior to the issue of a certificate of survey and operation on 21 October 2016? What steps has AMSA taken to ensure that sufficient resources are in place within AMSA and its delegated agencies to ensure that safety regulations are being complied with? Why did McConnell Dowell deny the Maritime Union of Australia right of entry to the site and the barge under the New South Wales workplace health and safety legislation in November 2016?

AMSA, New South Wales Maritime and these companies should answer these questions now.

I had a meeting with Paul Garrett from the MUA and Brian Parker of the CFMEU, who provided photographs of the barge following the death of Tim Macpherson. Problems identified with the barge included rusted, insecure and non-existent safety handrails; fire extinguishers and pumps that were not correctly stored or secured; the poor condition of lifebuoys, to which you could not get access to get them out, because they were tethered wrongly; obstructed walkways; the general untidiness of the barge deck, with trip hazards; shipping containers that were not properly secured; and the poor general condition of the barge. I have had decades of experience of working in and representing workers in heavy engineering around the country. The conditions of this barge beggar belief, and they are unacceptable in any construction or engineering undertaking in this country.

AMSA should also advise as to what steps were taken to ensure that the nine conditions on which AMSA granted the exemption certificate were complied with. McConnell Dowell and Brady Marine should advise of steps taken to comply with the conditions in the exemption certificate.

The death of Tim also raises questions for the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure in New South Wales. The minister should detail what precautionary steps were undertaken by Transport for New South Wales to provide a safe work program at the Barangaroo Ferry Hub when the barge Maeve Anne was issued a prohibition notice and taken offline by Roads and Maritime Services on 30 May 2016.

The unions have still been unable to gain details of wages, superannuation payments and workers compensation by the labour hire company who employed Tim. The unions are concerned to ensure that the legal obligations of the labour hire company, Constructive Workforce, have been met. Attempts to gain legitimate information from the company director, a Ms Millie Booth, have been unsuccessful.

Ms Booth, part of the Liberal Dominello family and a prominent campaign manager for the Liberal Party in New South Wales, registered Constructive Workforce on 1 July 2014. This was eight weeks prior to her previous company, Solutions People Group Pty Ltd, going into liquidation on 15 September 2014. Questions have to be asked in relation to the legitimate operation of this company and whether it is simply a phoenix company designed to avoid Ms Booth's legal obligations arising from the liquidation of Solutions People Group Pty Ltd. Millie Booth nee Dominello must immediately engage with Tim's union and provide proof that she has met all her legal obligations to Tim and any other labour hire worker she is engaging on this and other sites.

Tim's father advised me that he was extremely grateful for the support of the CFMEU and MUA. He advised that he was concerned at the politicisation of his son's death by the Minister for Employment, Michaelia Cash.

On behalf of Labor, I wish to express our condolences to Ashleigh, Jack, Kay, Ian and Christina, a family who will never be the same again, a family who have had a tragic loss that was entirely avoidable. There are too many construction deaths in this country.

Senator BURSTON (New South Wales) (13:36): I was hardly surprised in the Western Australian election to cross paths with preference whisperer Glenn Druery, on the hustings as always at election time with his business plan for getting representatives elected to parliament. Mr Druery claims to have directly or indirectly orchestrated the election of about 15 MPs since 1999. In the 44th Australian parliament, for example, Mr Druery says that seven of the eight crossbench senators, excluding the Greens, were elected as a consequence of his preference deals. Only Senator Xenophon on the crossbench escaped the Druery magic of 2013.

Following the Western Australian election, however, what did surprise me were reports on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald and on the inside page of The Australian that Mr Druery had campaigned against One Nation for two decades. Mr Druery was quoted as saying:

One Nation failed in everything they tried to do …

If that were not provocative enough, Mr Druery tweeted that Pauline Hanson's One Nation was 'virtually irrelevant', following the Western Australian election. In the real world, One Nation secured 8.4 per cent of the vote in those lower house seats it contested and 8.1 per cent of the vote in the upper house. These figures are entirely consistent with the polls and will result in One Nation securing two and perhaps three upper house seats. Before the election, Mr Druery boasted that he could get six or seven One Nation candidates elected using the preferences he had organised from other minor parties. His business plan is the conjurer's trick of setting up one deal to distract attention from the real deal happening elsewhere. You need to follow the magician's hands if you do business with the Preference Whisperer.

I have known Mr Druery since the 1999 'tablecloth' election in New South Wales, and his bullying of minor parties is legendary. Threats, intimidation and deception are the currencies of Mr Druery's preference dealings, in my experience. Just last year, in the lead-up to the 2016 federal election, Mr Druery rang the One Nation office in Brisbane and said he 'would tear out Pauline Hanson's throat' if she failed to comply with his instructions on preference deals. One Nation recorded Mr Druery's call. At the 2013 election, Mr Druery left a threatening message on Dr Patricia Petersen's telephone-answering machine, causing her to apply for an apprehended violence order against him. Dr Petersen informed me that she spent $28,000 on the election and lost all prospects of getting elected when Mr Druery dudded her Australian Independents party on a preference deal.

This is the same Mr Druery who tells The Australian that for two decades he has campaigned against One Nation. What Mr Druery really means is that 18 years ago, in 1999, when he manipulated the voting system in New South Wales by setting up no fewer than 15 front parties, he would not negotiate with One Nation because we were expected to receive a large primary vote. In fact, the third candidate elected to the legislative council in 1999 was a One Nation candidate. Ever since then, Mr Druery has been trying to weave his magic with One Nation and bully us into appearing on stage with the other victims of his preferencing charade. He spent years trying to ingratiate himself with One Nation with one hand while he slapped us down with the other. The same thing happened in the recent Western Australia election. One minute Mr Druery wanted to organise a preference deal with One Nation, and the next he would denigrate us, saying, 'One Nation is not to be trusted on preferences.'

Mr Druery is duplicitous in his preference deals, and his business plan is seriously flawed. Back in 1999, Mr Druery's business plan included setting up front parties with misleading names to deceive electors to vote for parties that appeared to represent their political convictions but in fact stood for something quite different. Election analyst Antony Green identified Mr Druery as the person responsible for setting up the Gay and Lesbian Party, which was formed by heterosexual activists campaigning for four-wheel-drive access to national parks. Mr Green also observed that Mr Druery and his friends set up the Marine Environment Conservation Party, another four-wheel-drive group more interested in bush-bashing than conserving marine life. In that election, the Preference Whisperer famously shot himself in the foot when one of his front parties, Marijuana Smokers Rights, received more votes than expected, knocking out Mr Druery and electing his mate Malcolm Jones, of the Outdoor Recreation Party, to the Legislative Council. What a disaster that turned out to be.

Malcolm Jones as a member of the Legislative Council continued doing what he and Mr Druery had done in the 1999 election—namely, working as conjurers for front parties. Unwisely, Mr Jones used the parliament's resources to sign up people to various front parties, identified by the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption as including the Reconciliation Party, the Environment Party, the Four Wheel Drive Party, the Workers Party, the Anglers Party, the Stop the Greenies Party, the Marijuana Freedom Party, the Country Party, the Free Education Party, the Gun Owners Party and the Horse Riders Party. The writing was on the wall for Mr Jones after he was found by the ICAC to have acted corruptly, and he resigned from the Legislative Council rather than suffer the shame of being voted out of the chamber.

Mr Druery modified his business plan and stopped setting up front parties, but he continued to ply his preference magician's trade by manipulating the group voting ticket to deceive voters and enhance the prospects for election of his many and varied clients from all sides of politics. His actions might not have been illegal or even corrupt, but they were morally and politically bankrupt.

At various times, Mr Druery stood as the candidate for the Liberals for Forests Party and the Liberal Democrats Party, but so far his business plan has failed to work when he is the candidate—a good outcome in my opinion, since Mr Druery's business plan is not just 'magical'; it amounts to a pyramid scheme that defrauds investors. Preference-harvesting Druery-style is a rort. He famously organised hundreds of thousands of preferences from minor parties that resulted in Ricky Muir from Victoria getting elected to the Senate from a record-low base of 17,122 primary votes. Nobody would dispute that Mr Muir turned out to be a good senator, but the word 'rort' is an appropriate description of his election.

Mr Druery said his clients represent seven per cent of the upper house vote in the Western Australian election. I have no idea who his clients were or how much they paid him, but the chances of them all getting a seat were Buckley's and none. The so-called Druery grouping is a classic pyramid scheme developed by Mr Druery for the group voting ticket still used in some of the country's upper-house chambers. I did hear a report on ABC Radio that he was offering his political consulting services for $50,000 per candidate elected on a no win, no fee basis. Perhaps the business plan has changed. Mr Druery denied the ABC report, but he had made a similar offer to One Nation in return for the six or seven seats he said he could organise in Western Australia. Goodness knows how he was going to get seats for all his customers in the west as well as for One Nation. I am reminded of the bloke who always picks the winner of the Melbourne Cup by having a few bob on every horse in the race.

The Australian newspaper report I mentioned earlier says Mr Druery works in a minor party senator's office and at the same time advises candidates of other minor parties how to get elected to parliament. I might be old-fashioned, but it looks like a conflict of interest to me and suspiciously like the same conduct that the ICAC labelled as corrupt in the case of Malcolm Jones.

The newspaper report also says that Mr Druery travelled to Western Australia 'on his own time and money'. I will not believe it until I see copies of his travel claims. Mr Druery is also accused of using his Senate name card to lobby for private business. Another issue is that Mr Druery's bullying is not limited to his preference dealings; I am reliably informed that some of his work colleagues are on stress leave on account of his behaviour in the office.

Mr Druery will say that this has been an unfair attack on his character and his reputation and a misuse of parliamentary privilege. I reject that proposition on the basis that there is really nowhere to go with allegations of this kind in the absence of a federal independent commission against corruption or a federal parliamentary commissioner of standards. People need to be properly accountable for the way parliament's resources and allowances are used, and Mr Druery is no exception.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania) (13:45): One of the privileges of public life is the interaction that one has with the community. That was brought home to me one week ago when I was given the singular honour of being able to open the Car Yard Cafe. The Car Yard Cafe is a facility operated by Aurora Disability Services. When I opened that cafe on 15 March this year, they were celebrating their 29th birthday, having been operational as a volunteer committee, with some paid staff, assisting the disability community by stressing their abilities and harnessing their abilities. Founded by the inspirational Joy Cairns and her husband Graham, Aurora Disability Services has provided assistance to countless numbers of families for nearly three decades now. They have facilities at Mill Lane in Glenorchy in the northern suburbs of Hobart. They also have The Old Chapel Tea Rooms in Glenorchy, and now their newest facility is the Car Yard Cafe in Derwent Park, which is very close by to Glenorchy—the next suburb south.

What made this opening so special for me was that it was a genuine celebration of community at its very best. The whole cafe was set up and is operated without a single cent of taxpayer money. It was all done on a volunteer and also a business model. The landlord assisted with a rental arrangement. A legal firm assisted with legal work. People made all sorts of donations and contributions to ensure that this facility could get up and running, and it would be fair to say none more so than the founders of Aurora Disability Services, Joy and Graham Cairns.

We, as a nation, should be celebrating facilities such as the Car Yard Cafe where the community comes together and works together to deliver for the less fortunate within our community, in this case the disability sector, and where the community rallies together and ensures that facilities can be provided without the support of taxpayer funding. I believe that that is a model that other communities around Australia should look at, celebrate, emulate and copy. There is so much a community can do if the community is appropriately motivated to do something for themselves and to assist each other. Too often there are people within the community that will say, 'Wouldn't that be a good idea,' and then come to government seeking taxpayer assistance.

I recall, prior to my entry to this place, having the privilege of being involved with the establishment of, firstly, Jireh House women's shelter, which is still going, and, secondly, Yastas, which is short for Youth Accommodation Services Tasmania. They are two facilities that were established by community people simply getting together and setting up the show without the need of any taxpayer funding. I recall at Jireh House, the women's shelter, we were somewhat naive. We did not realise that federal government funding was available until after a few years of operation. The ladies that ran the show then approached them, and Commonwealth departmental officials could not believe what had been happening without taxpayer funding.

The community does have a responsibility to provide, when it can, these sorts of facilities. So, when I was opening the Car Yard Cafe, pretty much at this time exactly one week ago, I could not help but remember that which I had been involved in. I was so excited to see the car yard owner providing rental assistance and a legal firm providing legal service and a cafe company providing free coffees for the opening. I am also reminded of the fact that milk, bread and other requirements for both the Car Yard Cafe and The Old Chapel Tea Rooms are provided by a generous supporter and donor. I think this is a model that needs to be emulated and supported. Having said that, of course, these facilities always need people who are drivers within their community.

As I indicated earlier, Joy Cairns in particular, ably assisted by her husband Graham, has been running Aurora Disability Services now for some 29 years. What should be noted is that, prior to establishing Aurora Disability Services, Joy Cairns was involved in another disability service provider, so she has a very long history. Her efforts in this area were awarded with an OAM some years ago. Clearly she is deserving of that for the work she has done within the disability sector. Joy Cairns, her volunteers and those who are employed there are committed to ensuring that the first three letters of the word disability are, in effect, written in lowercase, and the word ABILITY is written in uppercase. That is what they seek to do: concentrate on the ability of the people.

I invite any Tasmanian, or, indeed, any of my colleagues that might be visiting Tasmania, to pop into either The Old Chapel Tea Rooms or the Car Yard Cafe, and experience the wonderful, warm atmosphere, and be served by people who have a disability but are harnessing their abilities. They are very good and capable of providing you with a wonderful bowl of soup, toasted sandwiches, a cup of coffee or whatever might be your requirement. These are people who enjoy the opportunity of employment. These are people who really do see the benefit of working within a proper structure. They are trainees, and they are being ably assisted by the volunteers and the employees of Aurora Disability Services.

I want to place on record that I considered it a great honour to be allowed to open the Car Yard Cafe and promote the concept of community getting involved in self-help, and also the community considering where and how they might be able to assist those that are disabled amongst us—and, might I also add, the mums and dads who dedicate their lives to those who are disabled—with these services. They not only provide employment and training opportunities for the disabled in our community, but, in providing them with that opportunity, they also provide the mums and dads of these people the opportunity to be able to do other things while their children are at work, undertaking the servicing of the customers in these facilities.

I wish the Car Yard Cafe every success, and I encourage my fellow Tasmanians, whenever possible, to partake of the service and the beverages that they provide to ensure that they maintain viability. Aurora Disability Services has been around now for 29 years. I hope and pray that they will be around for many more years to come.

Senator WATT (Queensland) (13:54): I have previously advised the Senate of the fact that my Senate office will shortly be opening on the Gold Coast, which will be the first time in about 20 years that the Gold Coast, which is Queensland's second biggest city, will have a senator based there. That will be a good development for the Gold Coast, to have more diverse representation than it has been used to in recent years. It was in that context that last week I was pleased to visit the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre in Southport with my good friend the shadow Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus. We went along to the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre, both to see what kind of work they are doing with Gold Coast residents and also to highlight some terrible cuts which that CLC and many others right across Australia face in the coming weeks.

The Gold Coast Community Legal Centre, like many others around the country, does really important work for very vulnerable people. It covers areas such as tenancy law, employment law and consumer disputes along with minor criminal matters. Community legal centres such as the one at Southport perform an absolutely vital role in providing access to justice for people who could otherwise not afford to take legal action themselves and hire lawyers at their own expense. Some of the most important work that the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre does is in the area of domestic and family violence. Unfortunately, this is a scourge that we are seeing around Australia, and it is pleasing that so many people have spoken up against domestic and family violence in recent times. This community legal centre does really vital work in that space.

Unfortunately, for reasons we do not quite understand, domestic and family violence is a very big problem on the Gold Coast. In fact, it has been the scene of some well-publicised tragic murders of women by their former partners over the last year or two. Probably many members of this chamber, no matter where they live, have been disturbed by those reports that we have seen in recent times. In that context, it is not surprising that the number of domestic and family violence cases that are handled by the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre has risen fourteenfold in just the last four years. There has been a fourteenfold increase in the number of domestic and family violence cases handled by the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre in just four years. In raw numbers, that means that four years ago the community legal centre was handling about 60 domestic and family violence cases, and that number has spiralled to the 890 that it currently has on its books. Put another way: about three years ago, one-in-12 calls that the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre received for its services related to domestic and family violence; that has now increased to one-in-three calls being about this terrible crime that is committed against so many women and children across our country.

It is no exaggeration to say that the work of the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre, in providing legal advice to victims of domestic and family violence, is literally saving lives. The work that they perform includes providing duty lawyer services, and it is particularly important in the Gold Coast because it is the site of the only Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Court in Queensland. The service also provides nine outreach clinics across the Gold Coast.

Unfortunately, that incredibly important work is now at risk from funding cuts that this Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, is introducing from 1 July this year. Funding to community legal centres right across the country, including on the Gold Coast, will be cut by 30 per cent from 1 July this year, which is only a couple of months away. That is going to have dramatic consequences for community legal centres across Australia. On the Gold Coast, that is going to have particularly dire consequences. As a result of the funding increases that federal Labor provided last time we were in office, the Gold Coast was able to increase domestic violence services. This community legal centre now risks losing both of its specialist domestic violence lawyers. This means that the cuts that Senator Brandis is overseeing will literally put the lives of women and children in danger because they will no longer be able to get the legal assistance that they need to protect themselves from current or former partners.

In short, the government must stop these cuts. It is deeply unfortunate that not one of the Gold Coast LNP federal members—all four federal members from the Gold Coast are LNP—has spoken up against these cuts being imposed, despite the horrific number of incidents of domestic and family violence that we are seeing on the Gold Coast. I have today written to Senator Brandis asking him to reverse these cuts—

An opposition senator: Strongly worded?

Senator WATT: a very strongly worded letter—and I am pleased to say that Labor will ensure that community legal centres are adequately funded in future. It is critical that Senator Brandis stops these cuts, to keep women and children on the Gold Coast safe.

The PRESIDENT: It being 2 pm, we proceed to questions without notice.

Senator LINES (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (15:03): Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from Senator Brandis representing the Prime Minister as to why my question No. 341, which I placed on notice on 12 January 2017, remains unanswered. As a courtesy, my office advised both the Prime Minister's office and Senator Brandis's office that we would be seeking this formal explanation.

Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Attorney-General, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (15:04): That is not the truth. We were given 15 minutes notice. That is not sufficient notice to make the appropriate inquiry, and I will take the question on notice.

Senator LINES (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (15:047): Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take notice of Senator Brandis's explanation.

That explanation from Senator Brandis was entirely inadequate. This is a serious matter which I placed a detailed question on notice on 12 January 2017, and this is a matter that I have been pursuing since April of 2016—in fact, since 4 April 2016. It arises from the issue of voting rights on Barrow Island, a big development run by Chevron. What happens on Barrow Island is that workers are required to work a four-week roster and then have a couple of weeks off. So, when it comes to voting, these workers are absolutely disenfranchised, because Chevron to date has refused to take up polling facilities so workers are able vote on site.

Firstly, with a four-week working period, it is very difficult for those workers to get to early polling—and, as we know, early polling opens for three weeks before an election. So, if you have four-week cycle that does not coincide with that three-week period, you cannot avail yourself of that opportunity to do early polling. Secondly, it is almost impossible to get a postal vote because, by the time you received it on Barrow Island and got it back, you would be well out of time.

My office was contacted by workers on Barrow Island—this is a matter they had tried to pursue themselves—who asked us to seek an explanation as to why they could not have polling facilities on Barrow Island. Barrow Island, at that point, was employing thousands and thousands of workers from all across the country who were not able to exercise their right to vote.

It is somewhat ironic, for a government that goes on and on about rights, particularly in relation to being able to offend people under 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, that this matter has fallen on deaf ears. We not only put questions on notice to the government about what was happening on Barrow Island and to seek a reasonable explanation of why workers were not able to get a polling place on the island; I also asked questions of the Australian Electoral Commission at Senate estimates. Quite frankly, their answers were equally unimpressive.

We have had a number of answers from the government, all of which have been evasive. We have so far dealt with Senator Ryan, Senator Cormann and, most recently, with Senator Brandis. But not only have the answers to questions been evasive; they have nearly always been uniformly late. So, for Senator Brandis to try and pull a stunt in here today to say that my office had not given him adequate time, when they have had since 4 April 2016 to answer this question—and most recently since 12 January—is a joke. Quite frankly, it is insulting to the thousands of workers on Barrow Island, who continue to be disenfranchised because we cannot get a polling place up there.

To add insult to injury, we were told by the Australian Electoral Commission—and we have also sought answers from Chevron in relation to this matter—that the quarantine requirements of Barrow Island ruled out putting—wait for it—a cardboard box on the island. We took that back to the workforce, and they told us there were other ways around that.

Now, as it so happens, I visited Barrow Island, and prior to going to the island—

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Senator LINES: Yes, the quarantine laws that are in place are absolutely appropriate because it was pristine wilderness and it remains free of pests. We want to keep it that way, so, yes, of course, we have to have very strict quarantine laws in place. But I, along with some of my Labor colleagues, visited Barrow Island at the invitation of Chevron, and I was required as a matter of law to undertake an online safety test before I was allowed on the island. We also went through the normal quarantine procedures when we boarded the plane. But I was told very clearly that I could not go on to Barrow Island until I had done this online safety test, so I did it.

Now you might ask: what has that got to do with anything? Well, sometime later the Prime Minister and an unknown number of people in his party visited Barrow Island. So, given that we have been told that we cannot get a ballot box on Barrow Island because of the quarantine regulations, and having been told that I could not visit Barrow Island without doing this online safety test, we went back and asked the Prime Minister: did you do this, because why should anyone be exempt if we are keeping this island in its pristine state and free from pests and so on? Well, it took about three goes to get an answer that the Prime Minister did not actually do the same required safety test as me, which we thought was extraordinary given that the AEC have told us you cannot put a ballot box on Barrow Island because of the quarantine restrictions.

I was told along with my Labor colleagues that we could not visit Barrow Island without doing the online safety test. But guess what? The Prime Minister goes to Barrow Island, and he does not have to do the safety test. He does not have to do it. So I thought, if you can make an exception for the Prime Minister and the unknown number of people in his party, surely you can make an exception for a cardboard box so workers can cast their ballot papers—and that is the question we went back with.

We have asked I think twice now: how many people were in the Prime Minister's party? We have not been told that. We now know that he did not do the online safety test even though I was told—and it was put in writing—that I could not attend Barrow Island unless I had done the online safety test, and workers have been told that they cannot have voting rights on Barrow Island because somehow the cardboard voting box would breach safety regulations. Yet the Prime Minister goes, and he does not have to follow any of these regulations. So that is the question that we have on notice that remains unanswered.

As I said before, for Senator Brandis to attempt to dismiss that question today is outrageous. We have been trying since 4 April to get an answer to this question, and I do not think any reasonable person would think that it was not okay to provide thousands of workers on Barrow Island with the opportunity to vote. That is what they are asking for, and yet we cannot get straight answers. Chevron, a multinational company that is not paying one cent of tax in this country, has simply ignored my requests for information. We have asked them: what is your objection to setting up a polling station on Barrow Island? Workers, when they are there, do 12-hour shifts. When you have workers on a four-week roster and 12-hour shifts, it seems to me that the most obvious answer would be to simply set up a polling station on Barrow Island. Chevron have refused to answer the question.

Despite us asking the AEC at estimates why we could not set up a polling station on Barrow Island, the best answer we have had to date—and we have had some doozies—is that it is because of these quarantine restrictions, which are so strict they apply to everyone, except the Prime Minister and his unnamed party. We are still waiting for an answer about the number of people in that party. Imagine if 20 people had gone up with the Prime Minister. It is not beyond the pale. Twenty people, none of whom had to do the online safety test that I, along with other Labor members, had to do. That is a big party to land on Barrow Island. But somehow the quarantine restrictions, which are placed on me and the AEC, are lifted for the Prime Minister. I can only conclude that if they are lifted for the Prime Minister then they can be lifted to provide a polling station.

A government that goes on and on about rights are denying workers on Barrow Island the opportunity to have the right to vote. Something as fundamental as the right to vote is being denied to those workers on Barrow Island. Imagine if some of the workers are fined by the AEC for not voting because they could not get to a polling station because of their four-week roster, or they were unable to exercise early voting because of their four-week roster, or the issue of a postal ballot was out of the question because they are on Barrow Island and it takes weeks for the post to get up there. Imagined if they were fined by the AEC for not voting. This is outrageous, and for Senator Brandis to simply dismiss out of hand a question that, at best, has been outstanding since 12 January and at worst outstanding since 4 April is saying to those thousands of workers on Barrow Island, 'Well, actually, we don't really care about your rights.' It was a pretty simple question about why we cannot get beyond the quarantine restrictions on Barrow Island. We seem to be able to lift them for the Prime Minister and his party but cannot get a ballot box up there to enable people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. It is absolute hypocrisy.

For Senator Brandis to dismiss the question out of hand today is not good enough. I will be making sure that the workforce on Barrow Island are told very clearly that today Senator Brandis simply dismissed out of hand why there is still no explanation or satisfactory answer to my question. It is not going to go away. I have pursued this issue since April 2016 through three senators so far and through the estimates process, and we are still waiting. If Senator Brandis thinks of frustrating me further today by refusing to answer the question, he is wrong.

Senator Dastyari: He does not know you!

Senator LINES: That is right, Senator Dastyari: he does not know me. I represent voters in Western Australia and I was shocked and outraged to hear that the thousands of workers on Barrow Island were prevented from voting. I do not think it is unreasonable for the Australian Electoral Commission to set up a mobile polling station. We have them in the most obscure places. We have them on Rottnest Island, which is a holiday island off the coast of WA. It is about a 30 minute boat trip and less than 100 people vote there. But guess what? For the state and federal elections we could put a mobile polling station on Rottnest Island when it would be very convenient for people on the island to come back to Fremantle to vote or to get a postal vote or to do early voting. But, no, we have a mobile polling station on Rottnest Island but we cannot put one on Barrow Island, which is thousands and thousands of kilometres away. Workers are required to do a four-week roster there which makes it almost impossible for them to exercise their right to vote, but we cannot put a polling booth there. And worse: despite my very, very best endeavours, the AEC has failed to give me an adequate response to my questions as to why we cannot manage this on Barrow Island. Three senators in this place—Senator Ryan, Senator Cormann and Senator Brandis—have simply refused today to give me a reasonable explanation as to why we cannot achieve a polling place on Barrow Island.

Western Australia presents a lot of challenges to voting because there are many remote places, as there are right across northern Australia and indeed parts of southern Australia because of our vast geographical regions. But somehow we still manage to provide voting opportunities for people across this country except if they are on Barrow Island. This is simply not good enough.

Today, for Senator Brandis simply to dismiss the matter out of hand and to leave this chamber is quite disgraceful. But it is typical of this government's arrogance that they do not really care about ordinary Australians. We have seen that through the harsh legislation they have put in place, we have seen it through their arrogance, we saw it in Western Australia from the Barnett government before they got completely smashed in the election and we continue to see it here today with the response from Senator Brandis as to why my question on 12 January remains unanswered. Why is it that workers on Barrow Island cannot be given a vote on polling day in the same way that other Australians go along to their polling place, get their names marked off and cast a vote? Maybe it is because they think all of those workers will vote for the Labor Party, but, like any workplace, there will be a diverse range of workers in that place. I would not be surprised if the government thought. 'We won't give them the vote, because they might all be union members and they might all vote Labor.' They are not playing fair, but we can make any explanation we like in the absence of a proper explanation forthcoming from Senator Brandis.

Since 12 January we have been waiting for a simple set of answers to a range of questions. As I said, I am not going away. There are thousands of workers on Barrow Island. They deserve to be respected by the Australian Electoral Commission and by the Turnbull government. To date, they have not been respected by either. We have had numerous explanations from the Australian Electoral Commission, the last being about quarantine standards. If the quarantine standards are so strict, they should apply to everyone, including the Prime Minister. Yet I know from previous questions on notice that those same standards did not apply to the Prime Minister. Come one, come all. If there are strict quarantine procedures in place, they should apply evenly. If they can be lifted for the Prime Minister and his entourage—as I said, it might have been 20 or it might have been 30 people, who knows? That question has not been answered—then they can certainly be lifted to place a ballot box on Barrow Island so that workers get their due entitlement, like every other Australian, and get the opportunity to vote. Who knows when there will be a federal election. This is such a precarious government that there could be a federal election in the next couple of months. I would hope that workers on Barrow Island are given due respect by the Turnbull government and by the Australian Electoral Commission, and are given that opportunity to vote in their workplace.

We put polling places into nursing homes and we put them into public hospitals. As I said, we put them on Rottnest Island, a 20-minute boat ride off the coast of Western Australia, and yet we cannot manage to put a polling station on Barrow Island.

Senator McAllister: It makes you think they don't want them to vote, Senator Lines!

Senator LINES: Well, thank you Senator McAllister. That is exactly the conclusion—it is the only conclusion that I can come to. They do not want them to vote because they fear that they might all vote Labor. But these workers are from across the country, out of all electorates. There are workers from the eastern states—from New South Wales and from Queensland. They are from all over the country; they are not uniquely Western Australian voters and yet every single one of them is denied that opportunity to vote while they are at work because—who knows why?

We have seen that exceptions can be made, so it is time that the Turnbull government, and particularly Senator Brandis, took this matter seriously. Make no mistake: I will be alerting the workers on Barrow Island to the flippant way that Senator Brandis simply dismissed their request to have that opportunity to have a vote in their workplace because of the shift configurations they work. It is a disgraceful way for the Turnbull government to treat workers. I do not know why I am surprised! That is the way that they treat workers generally—just to dismiss them, whether it is about penalty rates or not allowing them to vote. I should not be so surprised that that is the way these workers have been treated. But make no mistake: I will make sure that the video of Senator Brandis basically saying, 'Oh, I haven't had enough time!' is shown to the workforce on Barrow Island. Believe me, this will not be the end of this matter, because I am determined that those workers get that fair opportunity to vote like every other Australian and not to be disenfranchised because of the very long shift configuration patterns that those workers currently operate. Thank you.

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (15:24): It must be broadcast day in the Senate. The Labor Party senator who just spoke must be suffering a bit of relevance deprivation syndrome in that she needs 20 minutes to raise an issue—and to raise it improperly, I might say, and I will come to that very shortly.

Can I say that the speech by the previous Labor speaker is one that we will not forget for a while, because she repeated herself—10 times over, I counted. She kept repeating the same thing. Obviously, she had run out of material; she had to fill in 20 minutes and so she kept repeating the same things over and over again. So we will not forget or misunderstand what she was on about—no matter how untruthful and how mischievous—and how she deliberately chose to misrepresent not only the Attorney-General, as is the wont of the opposition in this place, but also to cast aspersions on the independent authority which runs elections in this country.

First of all, for those who might be following this debate—that is, if they are still awake after that 20 minutes of boring repetition from the previous speaker—can I just explain what the procedure is here? Questions are placed on notice and they are supposed to be answered within a short period of time—four weeks, I think it might be. And if they are not answered in that time it is up to the senators in the chamber to raise that during the day in the Senate and to ask the minister why it is that these questions have not been answered.

Now, because there are a lot of questions on the Notice Paper and because there are a number of different ministers involved—many of them are not ministers in this chamber, but in the other place—then the office of the minister in the Senate has to get in touch with the other minister and find out why these questions have not been answered. And so the convention, the courtesy, in this chamber is that if you are going to raise this matter and you are serious about wanting an answer, what you do is to advise the Senate minister's office in good time that you are going to raise this. That gives the Senate minister the opportunity of trying to find out why the answer has not been given.

Now, this is particularly important when it is a question not of a Senate minister but of a minister in the other chamber—as was the case today. In spite of what the previous Labor speaker has said, as Senator Brandis has indicated—and I believe Senator Brandis before I would believe the previous speaker—his office was given just 15 minutes notice. That is, at a quarter to two, his office was advised that this matter would be raised after question time, not giving the minister's office the opportunity of contacting the House of Representatives minister to find out what the reason was. So, clearly, the Labor Party were not interested in an answer; they were simply wanting to waste 20 minutes of time babbling on 10 times over about this particular issue.

Now, there are a couple of other points that should be raised. Sure, ministers should answer quickly. I might say to the chamber that I am still waiting some four or five years later for questions I put on notice to the previous Labor government. I put some questions on notice to the Labor government five years ago and they were never answered. Clearly, they are never likely to be. But I know that most of the ministers in this chamber are assiduous in their attention to detail, and had they been given some notice then the Senate minister—in this case, Senator Brandis—could have got in touch with the House of Representatives minister to try to get an answer for the previous Labor senator who spoke.

If the previous Labor senator who spoke were at all genuine on this matter, she would ask the questions of the Australian Electoral Commission—the commission which deals with polling booths. It is not the government that sets up polling booths; it is the Australian Electoral Commission—an independent statutory authority that runs elections in Australia. I have my issues with the AEC, like the previous senator apparently has, but I do not get up and make outlandish statements in this chamber. I go to committee hearings where I can ask the AEC what is happening.

In case the senator who spoke previously is not aware, there is a Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that after each election conducts an inquiry into the previous election. Things like where polling booths are, why they are not there or why they should be there are asked of the AEC at those committee hearings. There is plenty of time given. The AEC have been back to the joint standing committee about this election on three or four occasions already, and they will be coming back again. I invite the Deputy President to do what I have done and put yourself on that committee as a participating member. You can go along and ask those questions of the AEC and get answers from them.

To suggest that the AEC did not put a polling booth at Barrow Island because the AEC apparently thought that the people on Barrow Island might vote for one political party or another is simply an outrageous and disgraceful allegation from anyone in this chamber, particularly someone holding a high office. I think the AEC deserves an apology for that outrageous, untruthful allegation.

I do not know why there is not a polling booth on Barrow Island. It is the first I have heard of this issue. It certainly has not been raised in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. If the previous speaker really wants to help people on Barrow Island, there are things like postal voting and pre-poll. There are other ways in which people can cast a vote. I would have thought that people working on Barrow Island would have known an election was coming up and would have applied for a postal vote or found out when the pre-poll could have been undertaken.

It is a matter for the AEC. Perhaps this is a valid issue. But it is clearly not being treated as a serious issue by the Labor Party, which is simply using 20 minutes to have yet another baseless, groundless, misinformed and deliberately misleading attack on the Attorney-General. They continue to try and do it in this chamber. One day they will wake up and see that the Attorney is assiduous in his attention to detail and making sure things are done properly. Had he been given some notice today, as is the normal custom and courteous custom—the custom you follow if you seriously want an answer rather than just making a political point—it would have allowed the Senate minister to contact the minister in the other chamber to get the detail.

The Senate has other important business to discuss today, so, unlike the previous speaker repeating herself so many times, I am not going to take the time of the Senate on this particular matter. I simply, again, call for the previous speaker to apologise to the AEC. I suggest to the speaker that if she is serious about this matter in the future she should give appropriate notice so that, if she is genuine about getting an answer, the Senate minister has the opportunity to find the answer. I raise these matters so that anyone who might be listening to this debate understands what it is about and the import of what was said in the last 20 minutes.

Question agreed to.

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:35): Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from Senator Brandis, in his role representing the Prime Minister in this chamber, as to why questions 346, 347, 348, 349 and 350, which I placed on notice on 27 January, remain unanswered.

Senator McGrath: I will have to take that on notice.

Senator McALLISTER: I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's failure to provide an answer or an explanation about these circumstances.

It is perhaps worth explaining to those listening what the content of those five questions were that I placed on notice back in January. They went to the announcement that was made during the election campaign about City Deals for the cities of Townsville, Launceston and Western Sydney. I specifically asked: Which stakeholders have been involved in the preparation of those City Deals prior to their announcement? What progress is being made on those City Deals? And what resources are available for City Deals. My questions also went to the State of Australian cities report and the decision to no longer produce that document.

I pursued this in the most recent estimates hearings, and when asking officials questions I noted that I was asking questions similar to ones I had previously placed on notice. I might be reading too much into this, but the PM&C officials looked a little surprise to be asked this. I wondered—although of course this was not confirmed—whether or not they had in fact prepared answers to these questions and those answers had simply not been provided to me. Indeed, in those last estimates we asked officials when those draft answers had been provided to the Prime Minister's office so that we could get an indication of whether these answers are there and are available to be provided to me but it is simply too embarrassing to do that.

I say that because all of the signs were that the City Deals announced during the election were policy just made up on the run, policy that was essentially rushed out to fill a gaping hole in the coalition's thinking. This is one of the great gaps between the way this side of the chamber does politics and the way the other side of the chamber does politics. We have a very long tradition, reaching back to Whitlam, of taking cities seriously, of seeing cities as being at the core or our urban fabric and at the core of our society. We understand that the Commonwealth has a role to play in cities. Successive coalition governments have taken completely the opposite approach. They have washed their hands of infrastructure; they have generally considered that these are questions for state governments; and they have been unwilling to accept that in a country like Australia, where the vast majority of our population lives in just a handful of quite large cities, getting cities right is absolutely essential for our economy and for our society. Cities are absolutely places where Commonwealth governments ought to be very active.

But of course this is not something that the coalition generally takes seriously. Nonetheless, they found themselves with a Prime Minister who had made quite a lot of enthusiastic noise about cities, and doubtless they had to scramble to come up with something to say about it in the heat of an election so they would not be embarrassed. What did they do? In the last weeks of the election, Malcolm Turnbull and the assistant minister, Angus Taylor, announced three so-called City Deals: one in Townsville, one in Launceston and one in Western Sydney.

I should say that City Deals are a concept pioneered in the United Kingdom. They are a very good idea. And they have a lot to offer Australia. What they propose is a deep collaboration and a very targeted, place-based, specific collaboration between, in the case of the UK, two tiers of government—in Australia, three tiers of government. But it is not something you can just announce on the fly. In the United Kingdom the deals that have worked well are deals that build on deep relationships that are built up over time between their national government and the administrations of their cities. No such relationship was present in any of the examples that were announced during the election.

There was no such possibility of a bottom-up approach. There were no leaders in those cities or towns coming to government with concrete proposals about specific things that could happen that would make their city function better. None of this was evident. We did not see any of this. In fact, instead what we saw was a situation where the coalition was, in the case of Townsville, merely seeking to emulate campaign commitments that had been made by the Labor Party many months earlier. So terrified were they of their electoral prospects in Townsville that they simply sought to replicate what we had committed. They wrapped it up in a new thing with 'City Deal' put around it. But of course it was nothing like a City Deal. There was nothing like the conceptual or policy underpinnings that make it work so well in the United Kingdom. Plainly none of the work at all had been done.

I followed this up during the estimates process. I asked: how is this City Deal process going? What did I learn? In terms of the next steps—apart from these three deals that they have announced—I learnt that every first minister has had a letter inviting them to engage in a process and nominate perhaps a city that they might like to have involved in this City Deal process, which is still terribly opaque. There is no detail of whether there is going to be any further expansion of the program beyond just the one capital city that first ministers have been asked to contribute about. In fact, we were told by officials that details of this process are still being worked through. I asked about the cities reference group, a reference group that had been announced by Mr Taylor some time earlier. But again I learnt from officials that, as at estimates—and I have not seen any media subsequently to suggest that anything has changed—this promised governance body, this 'cities reference group' has no members. The membership of the group is yet to be announced.

Perhaps to reassure people that there had been some thinking, some policy work, done about cities, there is a public commitment that the government will publish a generic City Deal process document. 'Where is that up to?' I asked the officials. 'Well, Senator, that's something we hope to publish shortly,' was essentially the answer. I asked what other policy work was going on, and the officials explained that they were working with states and territories to establish a pipeline. And I said to them, 'But aren't you establishing a competitive bid process? Isn't that what the earlier document we were talking about was going to be?' And they said, 'Well, we're doing both things at the same time.' I asked, 'Well, it seems unusual. Normally a competitive bid process is what happens at the start, and then a pipeline is established, and then you select.' They explained to me that these were two things that were going on simultaneously.

I asked them when the promised national cities performance framework would be published, and they said it would be published in the second half of 2017. All I can conclude from that sorry exchange—and anyone who is listening might want to go and check out the estimates hearing with Prime Minister and Cabinet on that Monday night the last time we met and just have a look at how little detail there is about how this so-called City Deal is going to work and how little progress has been made since the election.

It is absolutely shocking. It is scandalous because this was a policy announced with great fanfare during the election, and yet there is absolutely nothing behind it. I am confident that the officials who are working on this are very, very capable, skilful public servants, and I am sure they are putting their all into crafting something that will work, that will deliver for cities. But isn't it a terrible shame that this is something that is being done after the announcement by the Prime Minister and the assistant minister? Isn't this work that you might want to do before you went out? It just convinces me, as so many things do with this government, that the person who has most influence in the Prime Minister's office is not the policy adviser; it is the press officer. It is the media advisers who are telling the Prime Minister, 'This would be a good thing to go out and talk about,' but there is so little thought given to the actual policy that underpins the media release, and this is a case par excellence. This is an absolute debacle.

It is a great shame, because we talk a lot in this chamber about the imperatives to restore productivity to the Australian economy. We had a long discussion about how industrial relations reform in just one sector of the Australian economy, the construction sector, was the thing—'the thing'. It was said at the time that we had the debate about the ABCC that this reform would be the thing to unlock productivity. We are having a discussion now about how cutting penalty rates on Sundays will be the thing to unlock productivity in the Australian economy. What nonsense, because some of the things that really would unlock productivity are sitting right in front of us, but they get no attention; no weight is given to them by the government.

Cities are absolutely essential to Australian productivity. Four out of every five Australians live in a big city, and by 2031 our four largest capitals, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, will have increased in size by 46 per cent. Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart and Darwin are expected to grow by nearly 30 per cent. Australian cities produce 80 per cent of our GDP. In 2015-16, Sydney's GDP alone was $400.9 billion, and it represented 24.1 per cent of our national GDP. The truth is that our transformation, our involvement in the knowledge economy, sees the CBDs in our cities right at the heart of national productivity, but there are real barriers to realising this productivity.

Urban congestion is not just an annoyance. I know that there are many people listening who really do find it very, very annoying, but the truth is that it is also expensive. Infrastructure Australia says that urban congestion will cost the nation $53 billion in lost productivity by 2031 if left unchecked. We hear the calls again and again from some of our most senior policymakers for government to address this. The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, called on Australia to lift infrastructure investment to boost the national economy and address traffic congestion. Mr Lowe said that improving the state of the budget should not preclude investing in rail and roads to meet community needs, to lift productivity but also to address that incredible irritation that so many of our city dwellers experience in terms of congestion. Mr Lowe said that increased investment in transport infrastructure would help housing affordability.

This is such an important point because housing affordability and the location of suitable housing linked to jobs are just essential for employment. We often talk about the increased benefits of connectivity, but transport is not an end to itself. It is a link between the places we are and the places we want to be and the things we want to do. It has an oversized impact on quality of life, and it has surprising flow-on effects.

In some suburbs, when you think about employment, only 14 per cent of all the jobs available in my home city of Sydney can be accessed even if you drive for 45 minutes. Take that in for a minute. People are living in suburbs where, if they are seeking work and they are willing to sit in a car for 45 minutes to reach that place of employment, still only 14 per cent of all of the available jobs can be found. This is disgraceful. The situation is worse if you are reliant on public transport. Many outer suburbs of Sydney offer access to fewer than one in 10 of the city's jobs within an hour on public transport. You are willing to travel on a bus or a train for an hour, and still you can only get access to one in 10 of the city's jobs.

These are completely unacceptable statistics, and they go to the heart of why a serious cities policy is absolutely essential for dealing with unemployment and for dealing with productivity. But that is not what we see from the government. Instead what we see is a completely incoherent process. And—back to the starting point of this conversation—when we ask questions about it, when we place questions on notice, they are not answered. We are well beyond the deadline, and the minister really ought to provide an explanation as to what is going on with the City Deals and why it is that he has taken so very long to answer my question.

Question agreed to.

Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (15:51): Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from Senator Fifield as to why questions on notice to the Communications portfolio Nos 374, 375, 376, 377, 378 and 379, which I placed on notice on 16 February, remain unanswered.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (15:52): My understanding is—I will have to take this on notice—that your office advised his office after question time had finished. The customs and the courtesies of this place are for good notice to be given to the ministers concerned. I would suggest, Senator O'Neill, that in future you respect the courtesies and the customs of this place in relation to giving good notice to the ministers to whom these questions are being addressed. It is clear that Labor today are playing stunts just to waste time. Sit down and let us get on with the business before the chamber. This is petulant and time wasting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (15:53): I appreciate that whatever that was is going to suffice as the minister's response to my request for an answer.

Senator McGrath: Well, you didn't give him notice.

Senator O'NEILL: I would like to place on the record that my office was directed to give—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator McGrath: No, you did not give him notice.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order, Senator McGrath! The senator has the right to be heard in silence. Senator O'Neill, please resume your seat.

Senator McGrath: On a point of order: you did not give the minister sufficient notice. You should be ashamed of yourself.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McGrath, that is not a point of order. It is a debating point.

Senator O'NEILL: Clearly, Madam Deputy President, the government have been found wanting once again with regard to providing information. Certainly, the direction to give notice to the senator was provided at a quarter to two, and I am very sorry that the minister did not actually have an answer prepared way ahead of this, seeing as this is a very, very important matter. Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation provided by Senator McGrath.

Many of the questions that are put on notice by this opposition to this government continue to be treated with the contempt that we just saw in that display, that fit of pique, by the minister on duty here in the chamber, Senator McGrath. The reality is that these questions, which were put on notice over a month ago, go to important matters that Australians have the right to have information about. It goes to the attitude that this government has about having any accountability at all for the things that it says and that it promises to this country.

One of the questions that I put on notice was around deregulation with regard to the Department of Communications and the Arts. One of the things the government like to bang on about, day after day, week after week, is how fantastic they are at managing regulatory reform. Yet, when they were asked simple questions, or what I thought would have been relatively simple questions, such as, 'What is the Department of Communications and the Arts net progress, for 2016 to date, for regulatory savings and costs,' they were unable to answer that on the day, despite claiming to be the champions of deregulation. They are still unable to answer it, more than a month later. We asked:

How many regulatory and deregulatory proposals were costed in 2016.

Again, there is no answer. Here we are more than a month later, and there is still no response. We asked if the government might provide some accountability to the Australian people for this great agenda that they have with regard to deregulation, asking if they would be publishing a report to summarise what they have been doing with deregulatory and regulatory measures and their associated savings and costs that they were going to try and bank over 2016. No answer has been forthcoming, and today is 22 March.

I go to the Department of Communications and the Arts annual report 2015-16. On page 31, under 'Targets, measurement, results'—which gives the general reader the impression they are accountable for what they are doing—they claim, in black and white:

Our target is to reduce the burden of red tape and onerous regulation in the communications sector, including efforts to meet the Australian Government's commitment to reducing the costs of excessive regulation by $1 billion per year.

That is a pretty big claim. You would think, if they were making sincere and genuine efforts towards that end, they might have some numbers on hand and provide the information.

Senator McGrath: Madam Deputy President, on a point of order: I think Senator O'Neill may have misled the chamber. You said before that your office gave notice to Senator Fifield's office at a quarter to two. I have just checked with Senator Fifield's office; notice did not come in until three o'clock.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McGrath, I think that is a debating point.

Senator O'NEILL: The government in their annual report indicate that they have initiatives to generate annual savings of $250 million for businesses and consumers in the communications sector. They said that their reforms were significant and that they were going to be able to achieve these savings. Yet, when asked for a cost assessment of their regulatory and deregulatory measures, they were unable to provide it. That is an indication not only of their failure to be transparent with the Australian people but also that they are making a mockery of the important processes of this Senate and the accountability that they should be able to manage when we go into estimates sessions.

There were other questions on two major matters that I know are of great interest to the Australian people, and one is in regard to Australia Post—again, with some need for detail. Australia Post provides a great and significant service to the country, but it is also quite a significant financial entity. Australia Post is responsible for providing a letter delivery service. But, as we have heard in a number of hearings over recent times, a diversification of that business has occurred with regard to parcel delivery. That is perhaps where Australians are really finding that service quite valuable, as things change. We know, though, that the valuation of Australia Post is of vital importance to Australia's national accounts figures and for Australians to understand what the value of that particular asset is. In one of these questions on notice, the minister was asked to confirm what the administered investment value of Australia Post was in the most recent annual report. But the department of communications were unable to provide an answer. Again, they have had that question for more than one month, since 16 February, and no response has been provided.

There is a particularly important dimension to the questions that were asked on notice by us in opposition, and that is in regard to the valuation of Australia Post and the change of that information from 2014-15 through to the current period. The valuation, of course, is a vital element of the government's accounting, and the figures that are here represented on an annual basis to make sure that the Australia people can see what is going on. The questions that we asked seem pretty innocuous to me and they seem like ones that should not be too difficult to answer.

With reference to that valuation of Australia Post, we asked further questions about when the most recent valuation of Australia Post was undertaken. We sought to ascertain by whom that valuation might have been undertaken. There was no information. It is a relatively reasonable request for information. It should have been something that the government were able to answer. When we asked for details about how long the valuation document was, they could not answer. We started to wonder if, indeed, there was a valuation document. We asked for the commencement date and the completion date of the processes that were to be provided. We asked for relevant contract notices, if there was indeed an independent valuation undertaken. None of that information was forthcoming on that day, and it still has not been provided to us here in the Senate. We wanted to know about how these figures informed the department's current financial statement. It is pretty well known to every small company across the country that you have your financial statements and you keep them in order and you have fair and reasonable valuations. This government, sadly, could not provide the answers to those questions.

Questions 376, 375 and 374 go to the NBN. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this matter, because this government has proven itself to fail on the three areas that it indicated it was going to be a success in terms of delivering the NBN. You might remember the mantra that they put out prior to the election: cheaper, faster and sooner. That was their promise on the NBN. Let us have a look at their record so far and why we should be paying particularly close attention to what they are doing with the accounts. The 'sooner' claim was made by Malcom Turnbull when he made the announcement that he was going to dismantle the proper rollout of fibre to all the premises, both businesses and homes. Malcom said that he would get it to Australians sooner by changing it to a multitechnology mix. Indeed, he made his commitment that by the end of 2016 Australians would have his cheaper, sooner, faster NBN. It is 2017, and I know that right around this country those who have received the NBN so far are extremely unhappy about the service that has been provided by the NBN to the node. I know that those who are waiting for it still do not have adequate information about what is going to come to them. The timelines are all over the place. The government are running and hiding from the commitments that Mr Turnbull made when he was the minister for communications and is failing to honour in his continuing role as the Prime Minister of Australia.

They failed on the 'sooner'. Let us have a look at their next promise. They said that they would deliver a 'faster' NBN. It is not faster, because it has not arrived in the time that they said, but it is not faster even if you do have it. Around the world, Australia's aspiration for a speed of 25 megabits down and five megabits up is a joke. If you offer it to people in any country around the world that has a decent NBN, they cannot believe that Australia is proceeding with this subpar, subgrade advance of what this government are determined to call a super-fast broadband. There is no way it is fast and there is no way it competes with our international competitors in the world economy. It is a fail for speed. We know that with fibre to the node you have got a fibre network that is based on the movement of information at the speed of light all the way to a corner near you. Then it hits a box on that corner and from that point it is a goat track to your home. That is the technology that Malcom Turnbull has delivered to large chunks of Australia with fibre to the node. He has failed with regard to speed tests on that network, and the further away your home is from the node, the worse the service that you get. It does not matter if you are running a very successful small business in a regional part of Australia, say down in the Riverina or where I come from on the Central Coast or in regional parts of Tasmania or Western Australia, it does not matter if you are an innovative business ready to do business, if you are more than a few hundred metres away from that node, the speed that you are going to get is totally inadequate. It will not help you grow your business, grow jobs and grow the wealth of the community in which you want to provide that service too.

We know that businesses are reporting left and right that the reliability of the particular version of the NBN that Mr Turnbull has decided is satisfactory for Australians is completely under par. There are businesses that are trying to make orders and do jobs and are finding that they are constantly losing their capacity to put those orders through, because their line is dropping out. That is the type of NBN that we have seen delivered thus far by the government.

Given the fact that Mr Turnbull has failed on the 'sooner' part and failed on the 'faster' speed part, we are entitled to pay close attention to what is happening with regard to the 'cheaper' claim that the government says that they could do. You might remember that they made a great deal when they were in opposition about $56 billion worth of investment in infrastructure for this country so that we could compete on an even playing field with our international competitors around the world and so that we could have access to education and access to business opportunities and access to health with a ubiquitous market where 100 megabits down and 25 megabits up would be guaranteed to all Australians. That they failed on, and they have not declared in any transparent way what they are doing with the real costs of the NBN. They said to the Australian people that they would invest $29 billion. Towards the end of last year the community and industry saw how bad the NBN rollout is. Nobody in the private sector wanted to invest in the NBN that Malcom Turnbull was delivering. So, instead of that, the government decided to put $20 billion more of Australian taxpayers' money in. It is now up to $49 billion on their watch. We have a lemon, rather than a ubiquitous, high-quality NBN rollout of genuinely fast broadband across this country.

The questions that I asked in the course of that estimates around in February went to the financial assets that were noted in the communication and arts annual reports of 2014 and 2015. In the 2015 report there was a valuation of the NBN Co as $7.708 billion. When we had a look at the 2015 figure revised in the next annual report, that figure was revised up to $8.5 billion. We asked the minister to confirm whether the $793 million upward adjustment was reflective of an independent review, which is referred to in the document on page 112, footnote No. 3. It states:

Administered investment valuation in the NBN Co Limited is based on its net assets balance with the property, plant and equipment adjusted for fair value and the discounting of leave and superannuation liabilities adjusted by applying the Government bond rate. These adjustments were required to reflect the NBN Co Limited at fair value in the financial statements. The impact of these adjustments was an increase of $1.046 billion at 30 June 2016 and an adjustment of $793 million to the net assets at 30 June 2015 totalling $8.501 billion. The 2015 amount reflects this adjustment. An independent review has been undertaken to ascertain the fair value of property, plant and equipment in June 2016.

The problem is we asked about that independent review, but, when it came to getting an answer about the nature of that independent review, what we heard was silence—at least that was the case until today, when we heard that extraordinary outburst when we asked for a reason why the answer has not been forthcoming so far.

We asked if the independent review to ascertain that fair value of NBN Co, which was undertaken in June 2016, had been made public. Was it available? Could a copy be provided to us so that we could actually read and understand what it is that the government is claiming is the value of the NBN. Why does it matter? It matters for those reasons that I articulated a little while ago. The government has been found to be completely out of touch with reality when it refers to its commitment to deliver the NBN sooner. The government has failed its own test to deliver a faster NBN. Faster delivery is certainly not the case. Australians are not getting what they thought they were going to get. That has been compromised by Malcolm Turnbull's multi-technology mix, which is compromising Australians' capacity.

We also fear, which is why we asked these questions, that Australians are getting a raw deal in terms of the money that is being expended on this lemon of an NBN. We are just simply asking for some transparency and accountability around what is going on with these valuations. I do not know about everyone else in this chamber, but it seems to me that a few billion dollars here or there matters quite a bit. One of the concerns we have with regard to this independent review is what the government's practices are in terms of its determination of what I asked the department do around the nature of this review. Is this a review that is undertaken every year, or is it just this year that they undertook it to make some adjustment that might make it look a little bit better? Everything else we see around NBN looks like a bit of a con, frankly. We are concerned that these numbers are part of that game of presenting one image about the NBN, when the reality behind it is something quite different.

We asked to find out if the contract notices for the independent review, which they claim is independent, could be provided. We have not heard a word about that, and we certainly have not seen those relevant contract notices. We wanted to know at whose direction the review was initiated. We have not had an answer to that. We wanted to know what entity conducted the so-called independent review. I fear that we might get answers that will not be at all satisfactory, and that the government is not committed to providing them in a transparent way but will rather mask what has been going on in this space. We asked how long the review was, we asked what date it was initiated and we asked when the minister might receive this independent review. Sadly, we still have no information at all about that.

We know from the history of the national broadband that this is one of the government's great failures. On 11 October, Malcolm Turnbull hailed the coalition's NBN as one of the 'great corporate turnarounds' in Australia's history. He did not really mean what it is that he has delivered. If by 'great turnaround' the Prime Minister means backflipping on every NBN promise made to the Australian people, falling short on every target and overseeing soaring complaints by our constituents, then, yes, he is correct: it is truly one of the most astounding turnarounds in Australia's history.

The government's litany of failures with regard to the NBN really is absolutely embarrassing for this nation. We had an opportunity under the Gillard government and under the leadership of Stephen Conroy to develop a ubiquitous, high-quality, genuinely superfast network around the country; sadly, what we have got under Malcolm Turnbull is a very sad reflection of that. Mr Turnbull promised that he would deliver the NBN for $29 billion. Under his watch—firstly, as the Minister for Communications responsible for setting the direction, and now as the Prime Minister responsible for accounting for where we are—that has blown out to $54 billion. That is a cool $25 billion that he got wrong. No wonder we are concerned about the reporting of the financial reports.

Add that to his $50 billion proposed corporate tax cuts, and you can see that this is a government that is not responsible with Australian taxpayer dollars and has wasted a fantastic opportunity to invest in genuine infrastructure and productivity gains for this country. It has been blown away by Malcolm Turnbull's amazing ego, which has allowed him to inflict on this country a second-rate, perhaps a third-rate, national broadband system that will not serve our purposes. We have got seven million Australians waiting for the NBN, despite passing the date that Mr Turnbull promised them that they would have it by—that is, the end of 2016. Day by day, the folly of this government's second-rate copper network is being exposed. That is why we should have answers to these questions. This government cannot be trusted on the NBN; it needs scrutiny. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Senator MOORE (Queensland) (16:15): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Dastyari and Kitching today relating to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

Excitingly, I rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Brandis to questions asked by Senators Dastyari and Kitching in question time—if we can remember them. In terms of the process, it was very interesting to hear Senator Brandis talk about the deep commitment the Prime Minister has to ensuring that there is equality in our nation and that people will not be harmed by any changes proposed to the Racial Discrimination Act. It was important that that statement was made in this place. But what is really clear is that that statement needs to be understood and made in the wider community.

Since yesterday, when the proposal to change the Racial Discrimination Act was made public, on the international day to prevent discrimination on the grounds of race, we have seen widespread concern about the decision. We expected that there would be a wide range of views on this decision. But those of us who had the honour to be on the human rights committee, which considered over a couple of months the issue of free speech and the Racial Discrimination Act, were taken by surprise at the speed with which the government has now made the decision to implement a change that was not recommended by the committee—if anybody has read that report.

The committee's report is valuable because it is a snapshot of people's opinion on the issue of the Racial Discrimination Act at a point in time. It exposes a wide range of concerns about how we identify free speech in our country. It talks about people's attachment to the proposals that are currently in the act. It talks about issues of administration. Indeed, a number of the recommendations the committee made were on administrative changes to ensure that the act is administered in a more streamlined fashion. We felt that there was a degree of concern and agreement around those administrative changes. One of the absolutely reinforcing processes in that committee was a deep commitment to the concern around making sure our community did not have harm through discrimination on the basis of race. And there was respect for the continuing efforts to ensure, over a number of years, from the time this legislation was originally developed, that exactly how the act would operate came from within the commission itself and also through the legal process. It was reinforcing to see that, in many cases, there was an understanding of exactly what discrimination meant, what caused hurt, what caused offense and what caused harm. That was the core element of the discussions we had over many weeks, in many parts of the country.

There was not genuine, ongoing, complete support for change. There was support for needing to maintain aspects that showed respect on the basis of race throughout our community, but there was not a clamouring for change. There were a number of people who raised issues, and that must be acknowledged. I think it is a good thing that we would take the opportunity to review any legislation, but particularly legislation as sensitive as this.

What we have heard since the Prime Minister put out the cabinet decision to make the change to the act is a deep worry in the community, particularly from those who are concerned about how those with racial differences will be treated by other Australians.

It is important for all of us to stop and think about the people who will be impacted and are impacted by the legislation as it now exists. The voice of any person who feels they have been subjected to racial discrimination should be given special respect because they understand what it is like to feel they have been racially abused. I have not had that experience but, on the committee, I heard from many people who did. The majority of those people—and I say that openly—who felt they had experienced racial abuse or had known people who had been racially abused are deeply concerned about any changes to the legislation. In fact, they would hope that the evidence we receive, which is on record in Hansard, is heard. I hope that senators who are making contributions to this debate will have read that evidence and will know how fearful people are. They are fearful that the act that was designed to protect them and support them will now once again be party to debate in this place and the wider community about ways to change the act—but not necessarily improve it.

Senator HUME (Victoria) (16:20): I think there is an awful lot here that we can agree upon. All Australians have the right to live free from fear of violence and racial discrimination. This we can all agree upon. But the fact is that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is bad legislation. It is bad law and it simply does not work. It has not reduced racial vilification or done what it has set out to do. Instead, it has captured in its web students from the Queensland University of Technology. University is a place where ideas should be contested and people should feel free to say whatever it is they want. All that these students did was question the fairness of an Indigenous-only computer lab, and they did it on social media. This is not harassment in any way, shape or form. Section 18C captured in its web a cartoonist whose sole purpose in life was to satirise. But it did not capture a single participant in violent anti-immigration rallies in Melbourne last November and last June. It did not capture a single participant in the Reclaim Australia rallies in Sydney last July.

The law is not working. The law needs to be amended. I honestly feel that the amendments that have been suggested to both the wording and the process are measured in their response and will make this law more effective. The law was developed with good intentions; Senator Moore is absolutely correct there. It was established to defend the vulnerable, to articulate the principles of a successful multicultural society and to reflect our values of inclusion and acceptance. But it is a bad law that does not achieve its objectives. As legislators it is our responsibility to change laws that do not meet their objectives.

Instead of stopping racial vilification, it actually has the practical effect of making it unlawful to hurt people's feelings. That is such a subjective term. Such a subjective benchmark is impossible to maintain. It is political correctness gone mad. The only sensible course of action is to amend section 18C to direct it towards far more serious conduct.

I feel that the government responded appropriately to this problem. It was the right approach to convene the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. My understanding is that the work that was done by that committee was done respectfully, thoughtfully and very thoroughly. The work on this particularly vexed and contentious issue was done with the best intentions. The report from the committee is highly valued. I also would like to commend my coalition colleagues, the Prime Minister and cabinet for the mature, considered and respectful debate and for the way this bill was developed and delivered.

Let us have a quick look at what changes are made. The bill proposes reforms to the wording of the act as well as reforms to the complaint-handling processes of the AHRC. The current wording clearly lacks credibility. We are removing the highly subjective and emotive words of 'offend, insult and humiliate' and replacing them with the word 'harass', which is a far more powerful word and one which better describes the behaviour we all want to see outlawed. The current language in the Racial Discrimination Act lacks credibility.

It is not lost on me or anyone on this side of the chamber that yesterday was Harmony Day. We are a proud nation of migrants. We are also a nation that values our freedoms. The freedom of speech is fundamental, elemental, to all other freedoms. The changes proposed to the Racial Discrimination Act are not something we should fear but are something we should embrace. This is not a watering down of the law. It creates a clearer, stronger and far more credible law. Most importantly, it is a balanced law that will defend free speech and protect Australians from genuine racial discrimination.

Senator PRATT (Western Australia) (16:25): I also rise to take note of the answers given by Senator George Brandis, the Attorney-General. What can I say other than wow? How extraordinary to have this legislation announced on Harmony Day. It is a watering down of the antidiscrimination and antiracism laws that have well served our nation. It is also an incredible example of our dysfunctional and divided government. The Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have reassured this parliament numerous times that there would be no changes to section 18C. We have here a government that is giving in to not only the far Right wing of the Liberal Party but also to One Nation.

This week a friend of mine, Jesse Fleay, spoke of our Prime Minister and wrote on Facebook:

Imagine spending your entire political career posing as a progressive pinup boy and alternative leader of the Liberal Party only to get the top job and operate as the most conservative leader in Liberal Party history, for the simple reason that will follow Malcolm Turnbull to the tomb for the simple reason that you have no courage to stand up to your own party.

Time and time again we have had the likes of Senator Brandis and our Prime Minister reassuring the Australian nation that they will stand up for decent Australian values and that they will stand up against racism and vilification in our country, only to announce on Harmony Day this dramatic change in the law. This demonstrates that the Australian people cannot trust a word that this government says.

As Senator Dastyari pointed out in his question, on 16 occasions the Prime Minister ruled out changes to the Racial Discrimination Act—16 times. He also pointed out that Peta Credlin said that the most vociferous person in the coalition against 18C was Malcolm Turnbull. I wonder when the PM decided to join the pests seeking changes to 18C. She said, 'I too wonder when the PM decided to join the pests seeking to change it.' But again we see Malcolm Turnbull has changed his mind. Again he and Senator Brandis stood in front of the media and told us of their intentions to water down protections against hate speech in our country.

The incredible thing is—and we have seen Senator Brandis do this numerous times in this place—that he cannot even admit the backflip. There are examples after examples of him not being able to recall something relating to serious issues in this place. We hear this day in and day out. Is it yet another example of Senator Brandis not being up-to-date with what is in the media on any given day? It is simply absurd that time and time again the highest law officer in our nation is not up-to-date with matters in his portfolio and, as we are debating, does not give adequate answers to this place.

I spoke in this chamber some six months ago seeking reassurances from Senator Brandis and from the Prime Minister that they would not give in to the conservative backbench of the Liberal Party and make changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. How desperately badly have we been let down. The fact that they will not stand up for mainstream values is a terrible sign of the dysfunction and division in this government. They will not do things like implement marriage equality. They will not stand up for the current 18C protections. They will not get on with creating jobs and apprenticeships. Instead, they are absolutely besotted by the backroom, right wing— (Time expired)

Senator WILLIAMS (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (16:30): Until about three years ago, I did not even know this law, 18C, existed. It is not something that people pull you up in the street in the country towns and say, 'What are you doing about 18C?'

Senator Watt: I agree.

Senator WILLIAMS: Honestly, Senator Watt, I had never heard of it until it came forward in relation to your state of Queensland, with Mr Alex Wood and his fellow students at the Queensland University of Technology. What did they do? They went into a laboratory at the university. It is reported that the laboratory was for Indigenous people only. So they left and posted something on Facebook. The next thing was the courts. Ms Prior was suing these students for the sum of $250,000. Alex Wood has been hit for $41,000 in legal fees, four years after Ms Prior told him to leave an Indigenous-only computer lab because he was white. I find this quite amazing, and I am sure many Australians find it quite amazing as well. I thought computer laboratories were for all people—but apparently not. Regardless of where you are from or the colour of your skin, I think laboratories should be for all—and I think many Australians would agree with me.

The issue is these words 'insult or offend'. It is just crazy, because I cannot see why anyone would ever be insulted or offended when they are respected. In this world, in this life, you cannot demand respect; you have to earn respect. If people respect you, they will never insult you or offend you anyway. The legislation is so confusing, even for Ms Triggs, who does not have an understanding of it. The government is proposing to remove those words and replace them with the word 'harass'. So it is a case of whether you are being harassed because of your race—basically because of where your parents came from, what country you came from or what colour you are. I find this whole thing amazing. As I said, it is not a big issue in regional Australia with the people that I talk to. People do not stop me in the streets and say, 'Hey, you've got to fix 18C.' I welcome the government's change, because I just think those students being sued was just ridiculous. It would have put pressure on them going through the courts for such a long time. We know how the courts drag on and drag out matters. What those students have been through because they went into a laboratory is quite amazing. Let's hope the legislation proposed by the government—and I do welcome it—will, for a start, simplify it. Many of those involved in court cases over the wording of 18C do not understand the actual meaning of it, how it is supposed to work or how it is supposed to protect or whatever. It is confusing. As I said, Ms Triggs, from the Human Rights Commission, has even been confused about it.

Simplifying 18C is a good thing. We can all understand a simple law. The word 'harass' is not a watering down of the law. I just call that simplifying the law and making it better for Australians to understand. There are those who follow this issue. Many people email me and say, 'Wacka, we've got to fix this up; it's wrong.' And if it is wrong—and I believe it is wrong—it needs to be fixed up. As I said, it is not the biggest issue in rural Australia. Building some dams, building railway lines, growing more export markets and keeping good cattle prices continuing are issues—yes. Cattle prices are under a bit of pressure at the moment. They did get extremely high, and perhaps that was a bit of a worry in itself. These are the issues that regional Australians are concerned about. We have a good wool market, with record wool prices. It is good to see that after decades of devastating wool prices, following the crash back in the early nineties. Cattle prices are improving. I will say it again: those opposite banned the live exports to Indonesia—a crazy decision that had such a devastating effect on regional Australia. We saw cattle being transported by road from the top of Western Australia right down to Inverell, in the district I live in. How cruel it is to have to transport the stock so far because of the loss of the export markets. They are the real issues.

Let's hope that we can continue to grow those markets and grow our trade agreements. Former Minister Andrew Robb did a magnificent job setting up the free trade agreements, and now we are benefiting from those agreements with better prices for our commodities. Because of rural Australia, we saw growth in the last quarter for our agriculture exports. Things are exciting. I just hope the regions that are very dry at the moment do get some gentle rains, especially in Queensland, where once again they are looking to the skies for some relief. I commend the government for simplifying this whole law. (Time expired)

Senator WATT (Queensland) (16:35): I also rise to take note of Senator Brandis's comments in answers today about the government's proposed amendment of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. I was thinking earlier about how, when you come down to Canberra, you sometimes miss your kids and you think about the kind of parent you are and about the kind of child that you want to raise. I was thinking about the fact that pretty much everyone in this chamber, no matter what party they are from, would be trying, as a parent, to teach their kids how important it is to be respectful of other people. I do not think that there are many values that you can teach your children that are more important in setting them up in life than the need to be respectful of other people, no matter who they are, no matter what country they are from and no matter what colour their skin—

Senator Williams: I agree.

Senator WATT: And Senator Williams agrees with me, just as I agreed with much of what he said. So it is therefore very disappointing that the effect of the changes that the government is seeking to make here will be to create an environment in which people can be much less respectful of others on the basis of their race. It will remove the current prohibition on people offending, insulting or humiliating others on the basis of their race. That is the effect of the change that the government is proposing to make.

Currently, section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act prevents people from racially offending, insulting or humiliating others. I would have thought that in a modern society and in a respectful society all of us could agree that it is not appropriate and that it should be against the law for people to racially offend, insult or humiliate others. But of course we know that over the last few months a rump of the extreme right of the Liberal Party, in cahoots with certain media outlets and certain weird barristers from Queensland who shuffle around in duffel coats chasing shadows and making up straw men, have gotten together to make this a crusade which, unfortunately, this weak Prime Minister has jumped on. The effect of this change is to say that it will be okay in future for people to racially offend, insult and humiliate others, and what will not be okay is for people to racially harass others. Of course people should not be able to racially harass others, and that is exactly what the legislation as it currently stands is designed to prevent.

What we really have here is yet another pathetic backdown from a Prime Minister who used to believe in something. He used to believe in climate change, and now he has given in to the extreme right of his party. He used to believe in marriage equality, and he has now given in to the extreme right of his party. He used to believe in strong laws that prevented people from racially offending, insulting and humiliating people, but again he has had to cave in to the right wing of his party. It is no wonder that Australians have really given up any hope for this Prime Minister. If you are going to lead a country you actually have to be able to show people that you believe in something and that you will stand and fight for it. Instead, we have a Prime Minister who continually caves in to his extreme right.

None of us knows exactly what it is going to mean to racially harass someone; we will have to wait and see how courts interpret that. All we really have to go on so far is the comments of one of the people who has really driven this campaign, the so-called journalist Andrew Bolt. He was on Sky last night and he speculated that perhaps what would amount to racial harassment is making offensive, insulting and humiliating racial remarks about people maybe five times. Is that correct? Is what we are saying here that it is okay to racially humiliate someone once, it is okay to do it twice, it is okay to do it three or four times, but it is not until you get to five times that it amounts to something that is actually unacceptable in society? I disagree with that. I think it is actually unacceptable to racially humiliate, offend or insult someone once, let alone five times.

In the limited time I have left, I just want to deal quickly with a couple of the false arguments that have been put up by the government for why this change is needed. Firstly, they have said that the current law means that people cannot make small insulting remarks without breaking the law. That is just not true. No lesser person than the current High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel has said that the current law only applies to conduct that has 'profound and serious effects, not to be likened to mere slights'. It is just wrong that this law is restraining small insults.

The free speech argument is also wrong. The current section 18D of the act provides lots of exemption for people making fair political comment, and that would remain in place now. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Senator HINCH (Victoria) (16:41): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Gallagher today.

In question time today much was made about funding cuts coming up in the upcoming budget and also in the omnibus bill. Much has been made about these cuts to funds, and especially about the cuts to legal aid and community legal centres. I have in the past opposed some aspects of the legal aid funding which has gone to convicted killers, but I do support legal aid in principle.

The disturbing thing about the planned cuts that are coming now is that legal aid funding has steadily decreased. Both coalition and Labor governments are to blame for this. In 1997 the federal government spent $11.22 per capita, and today we are spending $7.84 per capita. Around 10,000 Australians are forced to represent themselves each year due to these cuts. We are finding that in places like Sydney and Melbourne, where community legal centres are being forced to amalgamate, we are having a problem where victims of domestic violence are having to travel by train or by bus for up to an hour or by car for 45 minutes to get to one of these amalgamated centres. It seems only eight per cent of people these days qualify for legal aid under the current means test. We also find that middle-class Australians are often cut out of the legal aid system. Quite often we have Australians living below the poverty line who do not qualify for legal aid. Look at what is happening overseas: in the United Kingdom they spent double the amount on legal aid per capita that we do.

Legal aid and these community legal centres help more than 200,000 people a year, but the centres are forced to turn away more than 150,000 people, often due to a lack of resources. This affects the Family Court. Lack of funding within the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court is resulting in family law issues being forced to wait up to three years for a final trial. We are also finding that victims of domestic violence and victims of sexual assault find themselves in Family Court often having to be cross-examined by the very man who allegedly attacked them.

These cuts that have been coming all the time here affect the most vulnerable and the most disenfranchised. They affect the elderly, the young, the disabled, the homeless, the Indigenous and people in rural areas. The list goes on. They affect people from low socio-economic segments of our community. As I said, with the waiting periods of the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court increasing, this delays access to justice. As the founder and leader of the Justice Party, this is just not on.

The cuts to legal aid and the community legal centres bypasses access to justice altogether by forcing people who do not meet the means test for legal aid to represent themselves. With the government implementing policies such as the debt recovery system within Centrelink, many defenceless people who do not understand how to respond to a debt recovery notice or do not know what further action to take are hindered of the opportunity to respond as the community legal centre resources are depleting.

And that is why I am very pleased to endorse what has been announced by the Law Council of Australia. They are forming a justice project led by the President, Fiona McLeod SC. They say their project will uncover systematic flaws and ensure the path towards equal access to justice and make it clearly mapped out. They will report their findings by the end of November this year. I am pleased to say that a steering committee of eminent Australians, chaired by the Honourable Robert French AC, the former justice of the Australian High Court, will oversee this project. The president of the council, Fiona McLeod, says:

Access to justice is a bedrock principle for our society and a means of protecting, promoting and defending the rule of law and human rights of all people. It is a core tenet of our modern democracy, yet unfortunately there are many who are missing out. A person's formal right to justice and equal treatment before the law is of no value if he or she cannot effectively access the legal system or secure protection of basic rights.

I think the cuts to CLCs and legal aid—and we are also talking about cuts to women's refuge centres, which is an abomination—have to be reversed.

Question agreed to.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:50): At the request of Senator Carr, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) 22 March 2017 is Science Meets Parliament Day in Canberra, and

(ii) this event provides a great opportunity for members of Parliament to meet scientists from their electorates;

No. 32—22 March 2017 7

(b) congratulates Science and Technology Australia for organising this event;

(c) acknowledges that this event is now in its 18th consecutive year; and

(d) urges all political parties, members and senators to recognise the importance of science to this nation’s future, economically, socially, culturally and environmentally, and to adopt policies which reflect this fact.

Question agreed to.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:52): I, and also on behalf of Senators Brown, Singh, Polley and Bilyk, move:

That the Senate expresses its sincere condolences to the family, friends and work colleagues of Mr Nathaniel Beesley, who was tragically killed at work at the Savage River iron ore mine on Tasmania's west coast on 17 March 2017.

Question agreed to.

Senator SINGH (Tasmania) (16:54): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) acknowledges that 22 March is World Water Day, an annual day to reflect on the importance of water to the globe;

(b) notes that:

(i) access to clean water and sanitation are foundational to human development, underpinning improvements in health, nutrition, education and gender equality,

(ii) Sustainable Development Goal 6 calls on every person to have access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030,

(iii) currently more than 650 million people globally do not have access to clean, safe drinking water,

(iv) this issue is particularly pronounced in our region, with only 40 per cent of people in Papua New Guinea, and 72 per cent of people in Timor-Leste, having access to safe drinking water, and

(v) Australia has an opportunity to drive global action on this issue, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull one of 10 world leaders on the UN-World Bank's High Level Panel on Water, and with Australia being co-Chair of the Green Climate Fund; and

(c) calls on the Government to reaffirm its commitment to:

(i) Sustainable Development Goal 6,

(ii) the long-term goal of reaching 50 million people with safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services through our aid program by 2030, as a measure of our support for the UN-World Bank High Level Panel on Water, and

(iii) using Australia's position as co-chair of the Green Climate Fund to champion the funding of community and household-level water, sanitation and hygiene proposals, as critical climate adaptation initiatives.

Question agreed to.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:55): First of all, I ask that the name of Senator Moore be added to the motion.

The PRESIDENT: So added.

Senator URQUHART: At the request of Senators Wong and Moore, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the sixth anniversary of the civil war in Syria,

(ii) the conflict's tragic cost in human lives, with estimates being upwards of 470,000,

(iii) the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria, with over half of all Syrians having been forced from their homes since the start of the conflict in 2011, and at least 13.5 million Syrians in need of assistance, and

(iv) the ongoing strain on Syria's neighbours with Syrian refugee populations displaced mainly in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq;

(b) acknowledges the ongoing contribution of the international community and civil society in responding to the Syrian conflict and humanitarian crisis with great compassion; and

(c) urges the Government to continue to work with the international community towards a long-term and sustainable solution in Syria, aimed at stabilising the region and restoring lasting peace and security for the civilian population.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia—Co-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (16:55): I seek leave to make a brief statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator LUDLAM: The Greens will be supporting this motion, and we welcome the opposition bringing it forward. I just want to point out the rather inconsistent way in which foreign policy, defence and national security motions are dealt with in this place. I think it is worthwhile pointing out the rather uneven and patchy way in which foreign policy motions are dealt with in here. We welcome this motion coming forward, and I do not want to detract from its importance and its significance given the magnitude of the disaster unfolding in Syria, but leave has been granted by everybody, and I hope that that courtesy is extended to the crossbench and indeed to anyone in here wanting to raise a foreign policy matter or a defence matter in formal business.

Question agreed to.

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (16:56): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) the United Nations Human Rights Council recently received a report (A/HRC/34/51) from the Special Rapporteur on housing, and

(ii) the report argues that treating housing as a commodity and a means of accumulating wealth disconnects housing from its social function of providing a place to live in security and dignity, and undermines the realisation of housing as a human right; and

(b) calls on the Government to treat housing as a human right.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:57): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The coalition government does not agree that a person's or family's home is a commodity. We are strong supporters of supplying housing for those most in need and contributed $6.8 billion in 2016-17 to support social housing and combat homelessness. Our ongoing policy work is aimed at ensuring an adequate and affordable supply of housing for hardworking Australians. The government recognises the aspirations of Australians to own homes and invest in their future. We do not support statements that pit one group of Australians against others or proposals to distort housing markets.

Question agreed to.

Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (16:59): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that the Government has had no choice but to walk away from funding coal-fired power stations as they now look to invest in storage technologies to support the unstoppable potential of clean energy;

(b) acknowledges that thermal coal is in structural decline and has no long-term future in Australia; and

(c) urges the Government to implement a just transition plan for the benefit of coal workers, before it is too late.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:59): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: Coal is an important part of Australia's energy mix, comprising around 63 per cent of our electricity generation, and coal will continue to be a mainstay of Australia's base load power generation. Coal mining is a key contributor to the Australian economy and creates significant employment opportunities and economic activity. In 2015-16 the coal industry was Australia's second-largest export earner with exports worth over $34 billion. This figure is expected to rise to $40 billion for 2016-17.

The coalition government's priority is energy security and affordability. We are taking action to ensure this. In meeting our emissions targets, we will not compromise energy security. That is why we are taking a technology neutral non-ideological approach where coal and gas, as base load power sources, have an important role to play.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that general business notice of motion No. 258, moved by Senator Di Natale, be agreed to.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia—Co-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:07): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the Government's recent announcement that it plans to spend $730 million on the Next Generation Technologies Fund, which has been touted as a "war chest" to help create "super troops" in the Australian Defence Force,

(ii) the Government's cognitive dissonance in committing nearly three quarters of a billion dollars to defence flights of fancy while maintaining the mantra that Australia needs to "live within its means", and

(iii) the Government's cuts to schools, hospitals and investments in public infrastructure, and its proposed cuts to Australia's social safety net; and

(b) calls on the Australian Government to spend $730 million on schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, as well as protecting and enhancing Australia's social safety net, rather than a slush fund for unnecessary and wasteful military spending.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (17:08): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The coalition government's investment of $730 million over 10 years through the Next Generation Technologies Fund, NGTF, is an unprecedented opportunity that can deliver high-impact future capabilities for Defence by tapping into the talent and innovation in Australia's industry and academic institutions. The NGTF will commit to research and the application of science to develop new technologies that have transformational capabilities for Defence. The NGTF will serve as a crucible for creating game-changing technologies through research and new technologies. Those that prove promising will transition to the Defence Innovation Hub for further development into Defence capabilities.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that notice of motion No. 261 moved by Senator Ludlam be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [17:10]

(The President—Senator Parry)

Senator BURSTON (New South Wales) (17:13): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes the statements made by the Chief Executive Officer of the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (the Royal Commission) identifying the extent of the abuse perpetrated by priests and members of religious orders;

(b) is of the opinion that, given the obligations on local bishops to disclose to the Vatican incidents of child sexual abuse, the Catholic Church must be aware of the identities of those perpetrators; and

(c) calls on the Government to request the Apostolic Nuncio, His Excellency Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana to provide a list of those perpetrators, as a gesture of co-operation and responsiveness, to the work of the Royal Commission.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (17:13): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: Thank you. The government supports the very important work of the royal commission. The commission is independent, directs its own processes and conducts its own investigations. The inquiry is ongoing. The Australian Embassy to the Holy See ensures that the Vatican is aware of the work and mandate of the commission. The embassy has assisted with document requests and the taking of evidence from Vatican officials in Rome and is unaware of any outstanding requests made by the commission. Because of the commission's independence, a motion to request the production of documents should not be directed at the federal government.